For moviegoers, it's a good thing "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" has been released during Comic-Con International. The supernatural show's biggest fans probably are too busy dressing up as Iron-Man or He-Man or Ticket-Scalper Man to register disappointment at the film's poor quality.

Considering 1998's confusing "The X-Files: Fight the Future," dispensing with the show's elaborate mythology was an understandable move for writer/director Chris Carter. But the stand-alone story is an uninspired excuse to drag Fox Mulder and Dana Scully through the same faith versus reason debates that encumbered the TV program.

Mulder (David Duchovny) is retired, living alone and sporting the kind of beard grown by candidates who lose elections, when Scully (Gillian Anderson) arrives to discuss a case involving an arm found in the snowy wilderness. I guess you could say she needs a hand. The limb was discovered via the allegedly psychic visions of a priest (Billy Connolly, in the film's only credible or Scottish performance) living in a prison dorm for sex offenders or anyone else caught on "Dateline NBC."

So Mulder goes on a "Silence of the Lambs"-style hunt with the help of some rather inept FBI agents, including one played by Amanda Peet, who apparently used her paycheck to buy extra-thick eyeliner, and someone named Xzibit, seemingly cast because his name is filed between W and Y.

We learn that a yellow-teethed Russian, who looks like Daniel Craig's less-attractive cousin, has been kidnapping women and locking them up in a dog kennel without so much as a basket to put lotion in. These scenes contain helpful titles displaying the exact time and area of Virginia in which they're set, just to fool us into thinking the whole thing isn't shot in Canada (which it is).

Meanwhile, Scully is lost in her own Lifetime Channel drama involving a sweet child, not-so-subtly named Christian, who she's treating for a rare, life-threatening illness. It's strange that an accomplished doctor such as Scully uses Google to look up stem-cell research, but stranger still is the movie's inclusion of a second priest (if one priest is creepy, two are positively bone-chilling!) who wants to forgo treatment and let the boy die.

Duchovny looks about the same as he did a decade ago, and may well be a vampire. His Mulder spends the movie trying to convince Scully that the first priest's psychic visions are real, leading to pseudo-philosophical bickering so tiresome you hope they'll argue over who has to do the dishes.

Though Anderson still has the kind of beautiful blue eyes that you want to do a fancy high-dive into, the story keeps setting her up to play the fool, and her performance suffers from Acute Douritis. If Scully's skepticism were wooden pins, Mulder would be a professional bowler.

"The X-Files: I Want to Believe" Rated: PG-13. Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes. 1 1/2 stars.

To find out more about Zachary Woodruff and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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