K-PAX Review
by Homer Yen (homer_yen AT yahoo DOT com)November 3rd, 2001
"K-Pax" – Only Limited Possibilities
by Homer Yen
(c) 2001
Sometimes life can wear you down like sandpaper. If you are not infused with periodic bursts of curiosity, your passion will deaden; your edginess will smooth; and your grittiness will disappear. So, we somewhat pity the frumpy Dr. Powell (Jeff Bridges) whose zeal equals that of eating a 7-11 hot dog.
He is a psychoanalyst at Manhattan's psychiatric institute. And despite the variety of eccentrics that he oversees, he has just about seen it all. Kindly but weather-beaten, his mechanical demeanor also affects his home life.
But in New York, miracles can happen. Just look at the indomitable Yankees. Their recent string of 9th inning heroics to overcome defeat was inspiring. And so is Kevin Spacey, who plays Prot, a mysterious patient that is assigned to the weary doctor. His understated performance is the best thing about "K-Pax," which is only a semisweet sci-fi yarn about an intriguing man who claims to be from the titled utopian planet 1,000 light years away.
The problem in the end is that the film is a journey that seems to build a lot of potential energy, but the burst is never released. It effectively awakens possibilities and sparks curiosity, but it doesn't seem to be channeled anywhere. The film just kind of floats 'out there' in space without any real gravitational pull to move it in any concerted direction.
That's too bad because Spacey's subtle performance lures us into a tale filled with imagination. Prot's convictions and his logical explanations make him the most convincing delusional that the good doctor has ever encountered. Even we may believe his far-fetched story. He says some curiously bizarre things like "your planet is too bright." Then, there's the strange way he eats a banana. Moreover, he displays an expertise in the esoteric field of astrophysics. Well, it's basic knowledge for K-Paxians as he mathematically plots his planet's orbit at a planetarium for a group of scientists and clarifies Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
Powell remains convinced that Prot is the tragic victim of trauma, yet he is captivated nonetheless. His dormant sense of curiosity awakens to a certain degree. So convincing is Prot that we begin to wonder who is the actual doctor and who is the actual patient. So, it is the character interplay that gives life to this film. He instills a sense of healing and a sense of hope, not only in the doctor but in other patients as well.
The film could have kept its gee-whiz pace for the duration and that would have been fine. But a couple of elements distract us. First, while Powell slowly recognizes that Prot is having some kind of positive effect, his family life never seems to improve, which seems to go against the direction of the story. Second, there's an abrupt change in tone near the end of the film as the melodramatic quotient goes into the stratosphere. While this sequence offers an explanation of who Prot is/might be, it seemed incongruent with what had transpired up to this point. Fortunately, watching Spacey and Bridges is gratifying in itself. The film just never reaches escape velocity.
Grade: B-
S: 0 out of 3
L: 1 out of 3
V: 1 out of 3
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