Scully, who now works as a surgeon at a Catholic hospital (Our Lady of Sorrows, nudge nudge), was always a wrestling act for Anderson, who had to fight against the character's morose, doubting-Thomas side, not to mention prosaic literary tendencies. Anderson loses the match here: Scully has ossified into one of the most humorless characters to suck the life out of a summer movie.
Perhaps the grimness comes from her frustrating professional life. As she fights to save the life of a boy with brain cancer, Scully learns a lesson that Mulder gleaned from his years as the FBI's house pariah: No paranormal phenomenon is half as crazy-making as a boss who stands in the way, in this case, Father Ybarra (Adam Godley), the hospital head who thwarts Scully's experimental surgery.
Between Father Ybarra's obfuscation and Father Joe's pederastic past, one might suspect the filmmakers of an anti-Catholic Church bias. Despite its title, however, "I Want to Believe" is not so much interested in setting up a dialectic between clashing belief systems as it is in delivering a socko FBI procedural. In both instances, it falls woefully short.
