The film is extremely rewarding on a wide-screen basis. although some of the close-ups might jar you. The X-Files is funny and edgy and absorbing. There are many small touches that add to its enjoyment. One such scene has a drunken Mulder looking for bladder relief at a DC bar. With the men’s room in disrepair, he retreats to an alley out back and lightens himself below a poster for Independence Day. Nothing like taking on the big flick of two summers ago. Yes, it’s another alien film, but, unless you’re cinematographically savvy, you won’t laugh at the self-effacing humor in realizing Fox also released ID4.

I confess I am a lesser-fan of the unconventional shenanigans of the pair (Which one’s Scully? Which one’s Mulder?) and their associates (What kind of characters are named The Cigarette-Smoking Man or The Well-Manicured Man? Didn’t one of them die on the show already?). I admit that there are numerous characters and situations in the film that left me befuddled. I didn’t let that bother me as I watched the cool-headed, determined Mulder and the hot and sweaty Scully toss barbs of sardonic humor about as they "fight the future" and the global conspiracy/cover-up set in motion by unknown (or at least confusing if you’re not a fan) sources that will affect the destiny of mankind. Heavy, eh? Well, that plus the forces at Fox who pray that you will not be disappointed by the $63-million film (you shouldn’t be) and that if you’re not an x-phile now, you will be a convert in time for the premiere of its sixth season this fall. If you watch TV, surf the web, read the newsweeklies, or generally breathe, you know about this film, and you might even be aware that it is butting heads with Mulan, an exceptionally good animated film from the gods at Disney. I can’t wait to see what box-office numbers these two pictures will have come the end of opening weekend, other than one will be on top and the other will be just behind. How’s that for handicapping?

The X-Files begins with a sequence reminiscent of the opening of the snow-covered desolation of Fargo or, better still, Smilla’s Sense of Snow, with a subterranean prehistoric glance 37,000 years ago at a close encounter of a deadly kind in what is now North Texas. Initial score: Caveman 1, Alien 0. Ah, but the secret war is not over as the action shoots forward to the present when Stevie (Lucas Black, the young friend of Billy Bob Thornton’s ‘Karl Childers’ in Sling Blade) stumbles onto something unearthly and mysterious, finding "black oil" (a lethal-creepy dark blood, for the five of you who don’t watch the show) in Blackwood County. The story quickly thrusts Scully, Mulder, and members of The Syndicate (described in Fox’s PR material as "a powerful global cabal of government insiders and businessmen") into an ever-maddening plot that hops between Texas, Washington, London, and Antarctica in their efforts to uncover or cover up the "truth," depending on which side of the conspiratorial fence you sit.