FamilyFans Movies

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K-PAX (PG-13)

Plot Summary: A man claiming to be from an alien planet arrives in New York City, and mystery ensues.

Reason for the Rating: A sequence of violent images, and brief language and sensuality.

America, it seems, remains fixated on the dream that somewhere out there is a race of godlike aliens who will eventually come to earth and save us from ourselves. This alien-messiah dream is played out once more in the latest Kevin Spacey vehicle, K-PAX.

In this version of the same old story, Kevin Spacey plays Prot (pronounced “Proat”), an alien from the planet K-PAX now inhabiting the form of a man who is visiting New York City for a short time. Of course, he ends up spending most of that time in a mental institution where he amazes and confounds the stoic Dr. Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges) during their frequent psychoanalysis sessions. All the while, Prot is also helping to bring miraculous healing to all his fellow patients and promising to take one of them back to the heavenly planet, K-PAX. At last, Dr. Powell uses that miraculous technique, hypnotism, to uncover (in great emotional detail) at least part of the mystery surrounding Prot. But is that all there is to the story? To be honest, by the time I got that far into the movie, I didn’t really care.

Although the premise appears interesting, K-PAX really turned out to be a wasted trip. Yes, it showcased superb acting by Kevin Spacey, especially during the transformations he exhibits while in hypnotherapy. But Jeff Bridges was a stolid doctor presented with very little depth of character, and all the other players in this movie were simply window-dressing designed to play up the quirky realism of the main character. In addition, the movie was interminably s-l-o-w paced, with too much time spent sitting around Dr. Powell’s office and way too many supposedly dramatic close-ups of peoples’ mouths (i.e. Kevin Spacey eating fruit, people whispering, drinking, slobbering etc.). It also often sunk to syrupy preachiness that tried too hard to make you weepy and made itself seem too self-important.

Perhaps the saddest thing of all about this movie, though, is its obvious yearning for a messiah---any messiah---who will come from somewhere outside earth and teach us to love, live, and heal. It appears that the makers of K-PAX have dismissed the fact that Jesus Christ has already done just that, and so the best they can come up with in His place is an emotionally afflicted alien with a fetish for fresh fruit. Sorry, but that’s just not enough for life---and it makes for a rotten movie-going experience to boot.

FamilyFans.com Recommends: Kevin Spacey’s acting is excellent, but the rest of this movie is a big disappointment. It’s just not worth the trip to the theater. .

After the Show…If members of your family choose to view this movie, use these questions to spark discussion about it afterward:

-- What parallels do you see in the character of Prot and the person of Jesus Christ?

-- Why do you suppose our society is so attracted to the idea of an alien messiah who will come to earth and save us?

-- What can you discover about the makers of this film from the characters and story they created for K-PAX?

Mike Nappa

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