THE RETURN of Mulder and Scully should have been an event. Six years since the TV series wrapped, a decade after the first film - during which time we have become dulled by house prices, credit crunches and gas bills - we were more than ready for another dose of paranormal escapism. But "the truth is out there" - The X-Files: I Want To Believe is terribly disappointing.

Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) have now settled into a proper relationship, each well and truly out of the FBI. She's a doctor and he, ever the obsessive, is closeted away in a room making newspaper cuttings. But the abduction of a female FBI agent leads the bureau to bring their reluctant agents in from the cold.

Hence they're flown off to a snowy Canadian locale, where the only lead is Father Joe (Billy Connelly, on restrained good form), a former priest jailed for sexually abusing his altar boys, who claims psychic powers - and visions of the missing agent.

So far, so good. No time is lost in getting our heroes out in the field, where Father Joe finds a severed arm in the snow. We're ready to be chilled.

However, Fox and Scully are beginning to bicker. Not bedroom bickering, or their usual "it's an alien!", "no, it's our new neighbour!" type of disagreement. They're bickering about whether they want to be back in the action. Scully is reminded of the effect "looking into the darkness" has on her man. But the lad is in his element; it's she who is getting discombobulated by faith, whether it be Father Joe's, Mulder's, or her own. And so they argue on, until we realise the tiresome interludes have taken over the film.

Belief has always been the subject of the X-Files: the gulf between Mulder's willingness to believe in everything and the po-faced scepticism of all around him. But the fact Carter is ramming this theme home from the title on down, and that he has so self-consciously focused the script on his stars - to the exclusion of the storyline and subsidiary characters - signals major misjudgement.

How I wanted to believe something supernatural, extra-terrestrial, or indeed scary was about to happen: that Father Joe was to be revealed as an alien abductor of children (that would have been a disturbing metaphor); that the cigarette smoking man (sadly absent) was harvesting FBI agents for body parts; that the rapper Xzibit would be punished for his totally idiotic performance by being turned into a puddle of mushy ice, or any of those ghastly things the X-Files does.

It was not to be. Instead, there are a few missing persons, mad dogs and cod Russian accents, some cheap Frankenstein grisliness - nothing we don't see in a hundred B-grade movies that carry no such expectation.

Tightrope walker Philippe Petit has never been short of either belief or self-belief. So much so that he appears a little mad. But inspirational, also, as is the film about his exploits, Man On Wire. This is a documentary in the mode of Touching The Void, which combined straight-to-camera accounts of a life-or-death dilemma in the Andes, with exciting re-enactments. In this case, James Marsh revisits the career of the Frenchman Petit, which led to his daring attempt in 1974 to wire-walk the 200ft between the towers of the World Trade Centre, a quarter of a mile above the ground.

The illegal attempt became known as the "artistic crime of the century" and Marsh, aided by the naughty personality of his subject, lends proceedings a conspiratorial tone; not least when recreating Petit and friends' cunning plan to enter the buildings with false IDs and hide from security guards until they could sling the heavy wire across the New York night in readiness for Petit's morning stroll.

The WTC adventure is interspersed with back story, as we are appraised of Petit's passionate commitment to learning the tightrope, and of his earlier jaunts across the towers of Notre Dame and Sydney Harbour Bridge. We also learn of his accomplices, including a childhood friend and his girlfriend, and their conflicted feelings about helping Petit to his possible death.

Also like Touching The Void, the fact we know he survived does not ease the tension as the moment approaches. What we're confronted with is an enterprise not just beautiful and barmy, but somehow profound - as this man with so much joie de vivre is prepared to lose his life for his art.

The Love Guru is not Mike Myers's finest moment. Myers plays an Indian-trained self-help spiritualist (complete with Peter Sellers accent, daft facial hair and a chastity belt) employed to repair the damaged ego of a hockey star who's been put off his game by the fact his love rival is better endowed. All of which means just one thing: a burst main of lavatorial humour.

Comedy of a much funnier, and much more risqué nature comes courtesy of stand-up concert film Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic. Silverman has been dubbed the "female Lenny Bruce", though the fact she plays on her sweet, girl-next-door appearance adds to the horror when she unleashes her very un-PC tirades about sex, religion, Aids, 9/11, old age and the Holocaust.

The line between funny and offensive is so fine that Philippe Petit might think twice about crossing it. And Silverman only just gets away with it. But the fact she makes us think about what is offensive and what need not be taken as such, and what is undeniably, if secretly true, is thought provoking enough to justify a lot of very good, if uncomfortable gags.