VIDEO REVIEW: K-PAX
Like the people who watch them, some movies live a long and fruitful life. Others pass by unnoticed. To me, the movie, K-PAX is like a talented, worthy individual, who has something to say, but is seen and heard by only the few. Then again, it may have enjoyed some box office, and I am only playing catch up with the video. I can't believe that it's news to me.
Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges star. But it is Kevin Spacey's movie. As Prot, he plays a sophisticated, somewhat amused alien from the planet, K-PAX. The film opens with Prot already in the bin. (A number of scenes are reminiscent of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) Minutes into the film, his on-going relationship with Jeff Bridges, the staff psychiatrist, is well underway. This is one of the holes in the film. Why is this man, who claims to be a visitor from another planet, and who reveals information that, as an earthling, he couldn't possibly know, institutionalized? It would seem that his casual remarks about celestial matters would cause some curiosity. At the opening, we need to know just a little about how he got in such a fix.
Oh well, Spacey is great as Prot, the misplaced alien, wandering around in a black sweatshirt and pants and wearing pitch black dark glasses, and tossing out bits of Einsteinian knowledge, all of which is met with bemused tolerance. Eventually Bridges, as his doctor, does take him to an observatory to meet with top astrophysicists, who watch Prot draw a celestial map, including equations relating to space, that he could not possibly know, unless he was actually a visitor from elsewhere. Another hole in the movie: There is no follow up to a meeting that leaves scientists wide-eyed. I expected a paternalistic government, not unlike our own today, to grab this guy at any moment, and throw him into a lab for further study. Eventually Jeff Bridges hypnotizes Prot, and learns more about him than I am going to tell you. That's because I'm guessing some of you haven't seen this engaging movie; and I hate reviews that tell me the whole damn story.
It's possible that K-PAX passed under the radar because it is a hybrid--an adult character study passing, for most of the film, as science fiction. The word probably went out to teenagers, the mainstays of the movie business, that there were no swords made of light.
9:56:26 AM 
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