Subject: Review: K-Pax (2001)

From: Homer Yen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2001 04:12:14 -0000

"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

==========
X-RAMR-ID: 30083
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 262811
X-RT-TitleID: 1110283
X-RT-AuthorID: 1370
X-RT-RatingText: B-