Who among us does not recall the early days of The X-Files when Fox Mulder bravely faced the truth against all consequences and played a fabulous heartthrob as well?  We’ve known those days are over, but for those of us who still held a candle for David Duchovny’s whimpering eyes, its time to blow it out.  With Return to Me, a new film by Bonnie Hunt, Duchovny stoops to a level that is beyond redemption.

It is an insult to my intelligence and yours to retell the story of Return to Me, a malignant melodrama that ought to be cut from the history of filmmaking like a tumor.  If you must know the story, rent Sleepless in Seattle again and pretend Meg Ryan, in addition to being an annoying bitch, had heart disease and miraculously recovered after receiving Tom Hank’s dead wife’s heart.

Return to Me will make you believe Ralph Fiennes is as good as Marcello Mastroianni, or the next Marlon Brando.  Tom Hanks, has anyone told you, you are Humphrey Bogart?  Bruce Willis, forgive me for saying so, but how come you have not won Best Actor?  Next to David Duchovny the second rate leading men of today’s Hollywood are the sexiest, most charismatic, enigmatic, charming and seductive creatures ever to be captured on the Silver Screen.  They are downright thespians when viewed in the light of David Duchovny’s inability to believably convey any emotional state whatsoever. 

Not even Oprah pulls as many tear-jerking strings as Return to Me. 

More insidious, though, than the shamelessness of its sob story is the film’s blatant disrespect for the talent and abilities of it’s supporting cast.  It is a dishonor to Carroll O’Connor to be slapped with an awful accent and made to carry on like a buffoon.  Robert Loggia is terrific as usual if it weren’t for the fact that the film treats all those over 60 as regressed children incapable of anything but the simplest of Old Timer jokes and squabbles.  James Belushi’s comedy, while funny as ever, only makes it more painfully obvious that it is trapped in an inexcusably third rate film.

And Minnie Driver, who bears an unnerving resemblance to a mouse of the same name, will make you scream for mercy and beg for someone as charismatic as Molly Ringwald to save the day. 

How can they make movies so terrible, you ask?  Because people keep going to see them.  Which is why I implore you, don’t see this movie.  The power of the pocketbook is the only to way to protest the onslaught of bad cinema.  Protest the waste of time, money and fossil fuels that went in to making this film.  Send a message to Hollywood that you won’t stand for it.  Boycott this movie.  Take your $8.50 over to the Embarcadero and see Boys Don’t Cry again.  Cast your vote for High Fidelity by giving it your $8.75.  But do not under any circumstances allow yourself to be robbed by Bonnie Hunt, David Duchovny and Minnie Driver.  I repeat: DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE.