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A waste of space
K-PAX, the story of a mysterious man who may or may not be an alien, is not an uplifting close encounter.
By STEVE PERSALL
© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 25, 2001
Why can movies so deftly depict fractured psyches yet make such clumsy moves in putting the pieces back together? Psychotherapy becomes little more than post-trauma cliches, a little hypnosis and a lot of talking. Crazy sells tickets; curing often kills movies.
So it is with K-PAX, a movie named for the planet an otherworldly man named Prot claims to be from. Prot rhymes with emote, which is what Kevin Spacey overdoes in the role. Much of the excess resides in the script, a literary cheat steering the solution firmly in an optimistic direction before crashing to earth.
K-PAX should be the film we need right now, an uplifting close encounter of another kind. It is for a while, as Prot mysteriously appears in Grand Central Station and gets placed in a typical movie cuckoo's nest. Not for long, he insists. His five-year tour of Earth is about to end, and he can take one person back to K-PAX with him.
Bleeding-heart Freudian Dr. Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges) doesn't buy it. He believes Prot is clinically deluded and worries that those false beliefs are spreading to other patients. A few talking-head sessions and astounding evidence laden into the screenplay that can't be explained later make the good doctor reconsider. Awakenings meets Patch Adams.
One traumatic flashback and an hour of wonder is wasted. The movie settles into Ordinary People mode with Prot's psychosis obvious to everyone except those on screen. Who's deluded now? K-PAX shifts from a movie making us think to a movie doing our thinking for us.
Spelling out the problems with Softley's film means spoiling the reason many moviegoers want to see K-PAX. We want Prot to be an alien. We need it. We've got to get out of this place, if only for two hours, and somewhere in the constellation Lyra sounds good. Prot is a healer, assuring us that humans are better than we sometimes think. Who needs sage advice from a schizophrenic?
Turning positive fantasy into tortured facts ruins the best reason K-PAX should exist. Viewers may feel they're paying full price for half of the movie they expected. Director Iain Softley (The Wings of the Dove) slavishly goes through the paces, settling issues for any characters who haven't spoken or left their room or hugged their son in years. Prot cracks, and a feel-good movie cracks with him.
But how does one explain Prot's supernatural abilities? You can bend belief enough to think he could research astronomical data that eluded experts, but how the heck can he sense ultraviolet light waves? He can because he must in service of a casually fantastic script by Charles Levitt. K-PAX simplifies sci-fi and insults mental illness.
Spacey is solid in Prot's lucid state, tossing off bemused comments about earthlings and eating banana peels. The performance falters from the first mention of hypnosis, leading the actor to regressed kiddie-speak and whimpering memories. Bridges handles the savior-who-needs-saving role well, although his presence recalls how Starman covered similar material in more satisfying fashion. At least that space cadet was heading somewhere we've never been.
K-PAX
Grade: C+
Director: Iain Softley
Cast: Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges, Mary McCormack, Alfre Woodard, David Patrick Kelly, Saul Williams
Screenplay: Charles Levitt, based on the novel by Gene Brewer
Rating: PG-13; profanity, brief violence, mature psychological themes
Running time: 122 min.
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