Reviews: K-Pax

[Fergus]

These are the thoughts I posted on Friday night after I saw it.

"Capital K, dash, Capital P, A, X," is how Spacey refers to it in this sci-fi drama. Although it is still in question in my mind as whether it is really a scifi movie or just a drama. Throughout the film, I wondered to myself as to whether it was a good movie or not, and finally settled that it was definitely good. It gives you lots of time for thinking about what happens. It gives you some event, then time to think about what happens. It all builds rather nicely, Spacey who does an outstanding job portraying "Prot," pronounced "Prote."

I loved the film in that you are always questioning what is going on. I was throughout the movie trying to apply the message in which it held. Also, to really understand what Prot's purposes were. It is a very deep, intellectual kind of movie that we as moviegoers, are starved of most of the time. I did have a few problems with it, which meant this wasn't going to be a GREAT film, but I really liked this. The ending definitely made it worthwhile for me. A standout part of the film, and it ends very believably; in a way, it all made sense. I'm trying not to give anything away, so I'm talking with pronouns and adjectives. But anyhow, this is one of the better films of the year, and definitely an improvement from "Pay it Forward" for Spacey. He is truly a great actor. 8/10

I liked it's message, the build up, and the way in which it doesn't spell the entire thing out for you. You are left with "frames" to decipher for yourself.A thinking persons movie--I love those. I drew my own conclusions, and thats what makes it different from most of the stuff they have released the past year, I'm surprised that Universal released it too. They released brainless crap like "Fast and the Furious", and JP3. A surprise from them.

Glad you liked it Jo.

[JoBlo]

JoBlo's 7/10 review of K-PAX can be found here: http://www.joblo.com/k-pax.htm

And what did you think of the movie? Add your comments below.

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[DieHardBruceFan]

I enjoyed this film too. Spacey and Bridges, you'd be hard pressed to find two better actors, they are just terrific and continue to show they are two of the finest actors today. K-PAX is an enjoyable 2 hours that won't blow you away but will certainly entertain you.

[Puck Bond]

K-PAX 8/10...

K-PAX is a wonderful tale about a strange man, who may or not be from another planet. that question is sort of left unanswered in this film and that is one of its main accomplishments. Still I am left wondering about our man Prot played excellently by Kevin Spacey in this film, long after I finished watching it. Also another solid piece of acting from Jeff Bridges. The sessions and interactions between these two characters are so convincing that you dare not believe that one of them is wrong.

[ColinM]

I don't think you can go wrong with a movie that stars both Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges. Bridges plays his part well, but Kevin Spacey predictable steals the show. I found his acting while his character, the "alien from K-PAX" Prot, was under hypnosis especially impressive, but the matter-of-factly way he played Prot was prefect for the character and very enjoyable. The acting is certainly the greatest asset this movie has.

I also enjoyed the small doses of humor throughout the movie as well, most notably a scene in which Prot eats a banana whole without peeling it. Prot has other funny lines throughout the movie, like "I'm an alien, but don't worry, I'm not going to burst out of your chest" and, after meeting four or five doctors, he asks "How many doctors are on this planet?" The reason I point out the humor is, although it's only meant to make you chuckle, it's still funnier than most of the "comedies" of this year. (CORKY ROMANO (3/10), ZOOLANDER (3/10), DOWN TO EARTH (3/10))

The thing that keeps this movie from excellence in my opinion is the fact that it seemed to put too much effort into "Who is Prot really?", when it could have gone more into the general behavior of human beings from Prot's perspective and Prot helping the residents of the mental hospital. Although both of these points are done in the movie, and done well when they are, it seems like half (or at least a third) of the film is dedicated to finding out whether Prot is an alien or a human being who believes he is an alien. But at least for me, it didn't take too long to figure out who Prot really is, and the movie put too much time into it.

Without that one flaw, K-PAX probably be one of the better films of the year. But it's still a good movie with great acting and a original, decent plot. Worth checking out.

7/10

[RicochetShaw]

One word describes this film, original. I have never seen anything quite like this film(please don't slam me if you have). I'm not saying its great or anything, I just thought it was ok. Spacey gives an almost solid performance as Prot, but the the scenes where he was hypnotized were just excruciating for me to watch(sorry to those that thought it was great acting). Bridges also does a nice acting job as Dr. Powell. One performance that was very unconvincing to me was the one played by Ajay Naidu who played Dr. Naidu in the film, it just my stomach churn watching and heaing him act.

The story was original and the film all together was pretty good. And the ending was really the most suitable ending I think they could have used.
7/10

P.S. I heard that the orignal casting called for Will Smith to play prot and Spacey to be the Doctor, thank God that didn't happen!!!

[movieman1969]

K-PAX is a middle of the road film. Great performances by Spacey(I really don't care for him) and Bridges(one of his best performances on film), but my problem with the film is that it falls flat where the story is concerned.
The story reminded me of much better films like ONE FLEW OVER THE COO-COOS' NEST and AWAKENINGS. The whole side story thing with the other mental patients is unoriginal(see the above movies that I mentioned)-seen it before.
Then there is the ending. I know that the writers was wanting the viewer to walk out with his or her own view of what happened at the end, and on that point I guess you can say it worked. My problem is that with my interpretation of the end just made me depressed. Just about all movies set in a mental institution depress me. I just can't feel good about this type of film.
If you bought the other interpretation of the film(which I'm sure some people did), then I guess you could walk out of theater feeling good. I don't buy that interpretation at all. (I'm being vague about these two views, because I do not want reveal anything to people who have not seen the picture.)

[REAL_XYZ]

K-PAX moved a little too slow, but I liked it anyway. This movie forces you to think and to draw your own conclusions. It does not spoon feed the audience. That by itself is very refreshing. Spacey and Bridges were great. I say...8.5/10

[gyro_44]

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. Some critics were saying it was gloppy and sentimental, but it worked for me. Kevin Spacey continues to amaze - the childlike curiosity in his portrayal of Prot makes the film all the more intriguing. Jeff Bridges is always solid. I loved the existential angle behind the film, and the ending - for once, it's actually satisfying that a movie leaves a few details to your imagination. 8/10.

[chkmate60]

I did expect some more cool sci-fi special effects from this...but I think that the way they went with the movie was a lot more real and I liked what I saw.

[rlc7]

Well, hmmm, was this really a Sci-Fi movie? I guess so, kind of, but it all depends on how you interpret the ending. You could also just call it a drama and you wouldn't be completely wrong. It's a little slow, and not quite what I expected, but all in all it's an enjoyable movie.

[The Other]

K-PAX (2001) Rating: 8/10
Director: Iain Softley
Starring: Kevin Spacey & Jeff Bridges



Thoughtful and clever are two words that come to mind when I think of K-PAX. It took me two veiwings to fully understand it. And now that I do understand it, it's like, duh(!) why couldn't I understand it the first time. Maybe I'm an idiot, I don't know. But, I'll get to "why" later, because that would be spoiling the film. I must admit I was a little surprised with K-PAX, since it seemed largely billed in the trailers as a comedy. While it has some comedic moments, it's mostly a sort of light drama, and a really good one. Once things move along and you start figuring stuff out about Spacey's character Prot, it can get pretty sad and depressing and you really feel sorry for him BIG TIME(!).

I think, and I don't think I'm alone here, that what makes this movie work so well is the performances by the two leads. Wow, can Kevin Spacey ever go wrong? He turns in yet another excellent performance in this film. He's a genius actor. Jeff Bridges is great as well as his psychiatrist. The movie is basically all about these two actors and their relationship. So if you somehow just don't like them, and I can't see why you wouldn't, then you won't like the film. In my opinion, I feel Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges could have easily taken the respective places of Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke in Oscar nods this year. I consider Washington's and Hawke's a joke to begin with.

K-PAX is a movie full of philosophical messages about humanity and life (eternal recurrence, re-valuation of all values, weaknesses of human race). These messages are given through the dialogues of Prot with Dr. Powell. It is asserted that we humans are very narrow-minded creatures with one-dimensional perspective on life. We also lost the ability to be amazed by the simple things in life, such as the sight of a bird in the bushes or a beam of light. The main message, which is the answer to the great puzzle about the true origin of Prot is, equally philosophical. K-PAX is NOT a typical Hollywood movie where everything is spelled out for the audience;. It will make you think. If you really want to know where Prot is originally from you have to think 2 dimensional.

Overall, a very interesting story, with interesting characters and great performances that will likely get you to ask "What is the truth?"

***SPOILERS***

Getting back to what I was talking about in the beginning, if you follow the moves made by Prot from the very beginning, you'll see that he controls the entire sequence of events. He inhabits the body of this catatonic man. He wants to be picked up by the police and land in a psychiatric ward. He finds a doctor who is compassionate and intelligent so that his host body will be placed in good hands when he returns to his home planet. Prot is a very caring being who feels so badly for what happened to his host's wife and daughter that he eventually obtains good care for him. (eventually leaves his host body and takes Bess with him) And that's the major thesis of the movie -- let's take care of each other, even for those people whose lives are devastated by grief or mental breakdown.

[fuzzy]

******semi-spoilers*************************I enjoyed K-PAX,i thought it was a rare breed i.e. a drama that isnt dramatic.By that i mean it is a drama we are drawn into and enthralled by yet it never becomes too dramatic or over the top.There is never any scenes of danger or dread in the film it is all played a light almost bouncy way.The main factor is Kevin Spacey's performance, you have total belief in him as an alien or a human, he is faultless.The music is also spot-on, for the most of the film is happy and light,which leads us to the subject of light which we see constantly in reflections etc thru-out.
The only flaws were very minor, Alfe Woodards character seems non-existant,the hypnosis scenes didnt work 100%,but these are minor.
As for the ending, yes its not totally satisfying but i'm still rolling it around my head 2 days later so that must be a good sign if i'm still thinking about the film.
All in all 9/10,no classic but very enjoyable.
One last plus point:no- one dies,amazing that we are spare an obligatory teary scene in a film of this nature.

[This message has been edited by fuzzy (edited 04-12-2002).]

[Lady Dragon]

I can't really say enough good things about this movie.It was funny,dramatic,thought-provoking,original and simply-beautiful,all at once.Kevin Spacey's acting was,for lack of a better word,astounding,and Bridges proved once again that he's a talent to be reckoned with.The movie features a lot of priceless scenes,like the "bluebird of happiness" part...In these days,when Hollywood makes big bucks from selling dirty words,filthy humor and lots of bloodshed,K-PAX is a rare gem and it's become one of my all-time favorites.10/10.

[The1TrueFrog]

K-Pax - 2/10



Warning:Spoilers
Ehhh... I fell asleep during this first half of this movie, waking up to discover that it was still moving at the sluggish pace of the overrated Beautiful Mind, with a story as dull as a two-year-old plastic knife -- and I thought to myself -- with all the rave and all the praise given to this two-hour-long sleeping pill, how could this be the same movie I saw??

Okay, weirdness, aliens, and science fiction are normally my favorite things. But this whole flick was just off. As good a job as Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges did in convincing roles, it doesn't make up for how excruciating this was. From the get-go, Spacey's character gets arrested for no reason of my understanding other than police think he's a smartass. A homeless man says that this guy "came out of nowhere".

An alien (named Prot -- pronounced "Prote" in English) somehow traveled with light beams across the universe to observe the human race here... ok, I'll buy that, provided he's interesting, ex. showing some kind of alien super-human powers of some sort, or even having a strange sense of humor. But Prot is just not very alien-like to me. Really, he's just dull. Even admitted to a looney bin he's dull. He gives away all these "facts" about his planet and culture and even tries to convince the doc that his bodily form has changed to adjust to the planet earth. .. uh ... yeah ... and did I mention that on his planet there are no families, sex hurts, and somehow this species manages to still breed.... yikes!

But somewhere in this rambling is a mission to spend five years on earth before returning at a certain time of a certain date, and he can only take one person home with him. In the process, this offspring of a seemingly cold species is able to cure people in the nuthouse with analogies such as blue jays.

But wait! To make the situation worse, the already lifeless film has a surprise CLIMAX where *yawn* evidence shows that this guy is actually NOT an alien, but rather a traumatized man that has somehow decided to believe he's an alien. Great, so rather than being a boring alien, he's just a boring man now. Woo-hoo! Not that I really gave a rat's ass at this point, but this new "twist" just left me with plot holes big enough to drive a MACK truck through.

Plot Hole #1) Not an alien, but he "came out of nowhere" in the opening scene. Hmm
Plot Hole #2) Not an alien, but was able to conjure up this entire map of his galaxy, which all these scientists, or doctors or whatever the hell they were ran numbers and found it to be TRUE! Hmm...
Plot Hole #3) Not an alien, but has physical resistance to certain drugs (probably the biggest hole of them all).

Needless to say this yawner tried to suprise me with a "climax" that just made things worse to me. To top it off, I can't think of one single character that was very engaging, but there were a whole lot of extras that were supposed to have meaning to them, but were just, well, crazy! "This guy strangled me to half death and I loved it! It felt great" HUH? I'm dead serious...

To make sure I'm not leaving anything out, I was rather relieved to see him lying on the ground in the hospital (is he dead? is he dead? please he's dead for putting me through this movie) ... but then someone else is missing. That's right, the chosen one has apparantly vacated to K-PAX even though Prot is not an alien anymore... Riiiight.... And the doc gets to push this alien (man? what ever he is) around in a wheelchair right before he meets his kid for the holidays....

What I'm honestly trying to say is, i really hate, HATE, HATED this movie, and appear to be the only one that did. Hell, even A Beautiful Mind as crappy as it was had maybe a little bit of spark in it towards the end. This was just pure crap. Even for a phucking DRAMA it was crap. It's obviously supposed to be one of those clever, make-you-think movies, but all I was thinking about once the movie was almost over was a group of artsy-fartsies standing up to give this a great round of applause as I tried to peel my lifeless body from my seat long enough to groan and go to the bathroom.

E.T. go home... go HOME! NOW!!

[Dignan]

For some reason I enjoyed this movie immensly. Spacey was wonderful, and the direction was top notch, very subversive and metaphorical. The script got a little overtly sentimenintal at times, but this movie still comes out on tops. I didn't think I would like this one at all, and I ended up being BLOWN away.

8/10.
Like One Flew Over thge Cuckoos Nest meets Starman and What About Bob?

Well, its like that for me.

[wyodebbie]

Kevin Spacey is absolutely charming in an intelligent way in this believable fantasy of an alien in body of man who is placed in psychiatric ward of a Manhattan hospital. Jeff Bridges, who was the alien in "Starman", was great as psychiatrist who starts to believe him. Both Spacey and Bridges had a wonderful chemistry acting wise together in this flick. What a smart script, not only do you have the alien story but the story of the human in the alien. You manage to have sympathy and love of alien for what he is doing to help the psychiatric patients and also the emotional story of human being and how Prot helps Dr. Powell be closer to his own family. Topped off by very good music and cinematography director Ian Softely delivered all around in this pleasing fantasy. Grade: 8/10 B+

[Cronos]

i really enjoyed K-Pax, Spacey and Bridges both gave great performances. the direction was also excellent with some great uses of colour that create some beautiful scenes and images, having heard little about it before seeing the film i was blown away by how entertaining and fun it was

8/10