I mean, I can understand "The truth is out there" -- a subtle double-entendre if ever there was one. But "Fight the future"?

That ad line -- apparently no longer part of the film's title -- is intriguing without yielding any concrete meaning ... just like The X-Files film itself.

Still, you've got to hand it to screenwriter/creator Chris Carter, co-writer Frank Spotnitz and director Rob Bowman. Transplanting an ongoing TV series to the big screen is fraught with dangers, most of which the new film version successfully skirts.

Three potential problems are especially perilous. First of all, how do you satisfy obsessive fans without totally baffling neophytes? Secondly, what can the film offer that everybody isn't already getting for free every week at home? And, finally, how do you deliver enough answers to the questions around which the TV show is constructed, without scuttling the show itself?

Only the next two weeks of box-office receipts and Internet chatter will answer the first two questions. For those of us who are neither obsessive fans nor neophytes -- for the record, I've seen most but not all of the last two seasons and a bunch of earlier reruns -- the film is a satisfying entertainment, diverting and frequently amusing. The filmmakers have wisely followed the Star Trek II strategy: They've given us a two-hour X-Files episode, with better production values.

The last issue is the trickier one ... and it's trickier to discuss without giving away central plot surprises. The movie opens with a prologue that invokes memories of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, not to mention the plot of that underrated classic Five Million Years to Earth: It's 35,000 years ago, before there was a Fox Network, before there was a Fox Mulder, even -- let's face it -- before there was discernible human intelligence. After five minutes of spiffy, if confusing, action, we leap forward into the present, when at least two of those three developments have come to pass.

In a seemingly unrelated plot line -- it doesn't stay unrelated for long -- our protagonists, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), are back to FBI fieldwork after the dismantling of the X-Files unit. They scan a government building in Dallas after a bomb threat has been phoned in.

This sequence allows the filmmakers to do one of those things that TV can never deliver as well as the big screen: As Billy Sol Hurok and Big Jim McBob used to say, they blow stuff up good, real good.

At the same time, there is something arguably distasteful about the way the film uses a deliberate simulation of the real-life Oklahoma City bombing as part of the plot setup.

Just as in the many episodes of the show, Mulder soon realizes that this "terrorist" bombing is Not What It Seems, but is just another manifestation of the jumbled UFO/shadow-government conspiracy he's been tracking on the small screen for five years. Soon he is getting info from the possibly unreliable Dr. Alvin Kurtzweil (Martin Landau), as well as running into such series semi-regulars as The Well-Manicured Man (John Neville), the Lone Gunmen (Dean Haglund, Bruce Harwood, Tom Braidwood), and, of course, Cancer Man (William B. Davis). Also showing up for the fun are Blythe Danner as an FBI official, Glenne Headly in a cameo as a barmaid, Terry O'Quinn as mysterious FBI agent Darius Michaud, and even the great German actor Armin Mueller-Stahl, as one of the cabal of Old White Males who seem to have taken over control of the universe from the Masons. Disappointingly, the popular Mitch Pileggi, the third most important character on the TV show, doesn't get to do much but glower and issue warnings.

Most of The X-Files (the movie) is good, clean, dopey fun. As has already been announced, the film does not consummate the potential Mulder/Scully romance, though the issue is touched on briefly and cleverly. There are several very droll moments -- most notably Mulder's confession/exposition bit in a bar. And the character names are a hoot: Kurtzweil ... Bronshweig ... Darius Michaud -- suggesting a keyboard, a deli delight and either a French composer or an early black filmmaker.

But, even by the standards of good, clean, dopey fun, man, does this movie have some Godzilla-size plot holes! Why, for instance -- and I'll try not to give away any big surprises here -- in the big climax, does a security breach in a secret facility seem to trigger earthquakes? If you were putting someone in a life-support pod for an indefinite and possibly very long time, wouldn't you, like, take their clothes off? It's silly enough to stage a major catastrophe in order to destroy a room full of evidence while disguising your intent. But to do it without succeeding at destroying the evidence ... and then not to follow up and finish the job -- well, that's just dumb.

The plot is hard enough to follow anyway -- and some really dark cinematography doesn't help -- but the egregious disdain for logic may make newcomers in particular throw up their hands in confusion.

While the movie does unequivocally clear up one of the show's ongoing mysteries, it leaves plenty of questions still up in the air. And a number of central issues are barely touched on: There's only a brief mention of Mulder's sister, and there are no shape-shifters.

Certainly it would have been impossible -- and disastrous to Fox's TV cash cow -- to clear up everything. And, even as it is, the situations have an overwhelming sense of familiarity to anyone who's watched even a few episodes of the show. The filmmakers even acknowledge this near the end: "How many times have we been here before, Scully?" Mulder asks.

You almost expect Scully to say, "Let's see: five seasons so far, at 22 episodes per season.... About 110!" But no such luck.

The X-Files.
Rated PG-13.
Directed by Rob Bowman. With David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Martin Landau and William B. Davis.