Subject: Review: K-Pax (2001)

From: Harvey S. Karten <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 18:27:24 -0000

K-PAX

 Reviewed by Harvey Karten
 Universal Pictures
 Director:  Iain Softley
 Writer:  Bryan Goluboff, Charles Leavitt, novel by Gene Brewer
 Cast: Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridget, Alfre Woodard, Mary
McCormack
 Screened at: Sony Lincoln Sq., NYC, 10/22/01

    What makes sci-fi work for you?  For me, a science fiction
story must be absorbing above all; it should have internal logic; it
should say something about the contemporary world.  "Stepford
Wives" is one example of a good one.  1.  An entrancing tale; 2. 
A message about feminism; 3.  Believable in its way.  "Logan's
Run" is another, with its 1. absorbing visuals; 2.  Credible story;
3. Its point about how our society is so youth-absorbed that it
disregards the input of its elders.

   "K-PAX" by contrast is shaky.  Director Iain Softley wants to
keep the audience guessing about the verity of claims made by 
Prot (Kevin Spacey), a man who is considered by most to be out
of his mind, though harmless, and who is therefore kept in a
psychiatric institute for weeks.  Now, if you take a look at the
patients in the building that houses the emotionally disturbed you
may note that not a single one of them would qualify to remain
there as none of them is violent.  Obnoxious, maybe; but that's
about it.  Also: this is presumably a government-supported
institution, and we know what those places are like.  Yet
prominent psychiatrist Dr. Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges) gives them
individual therapy in a plush office, the inmates get group
therapy, and the grounds are luxurious.  Given the fact that
psychiatrists dressed in $1,000 suits like Mark Powell can get
$150 per session in New York City, is there any credibility here?
The biggest problem in logic is that only a halfhearted attempt is
made to explain the identity of the visitor who claims he is from
K-PAX.  Oh, and when Dr. Powell goes to New Mexico to check
out a lead he receives about his star patient, he winds up
ultimately in the town of Guelph.  Someone gave him the wrong
directions, because Guelph is in the province of Ontario.

   As for the commentary on today's society, there's nothing
deeper than the sentimental twaddle peddled by the song,
"C'mon people/Smile on your brother/Everybody get together, try
to love one another right now."  Terrific melody, insipid message.

   The principal reason for seeing the film in two words should be
Kevin Spacey but here he turns in one of his least edgy, most
gruesomely sentimental characterizations.  Spacey is in the role
of Prot, who appears in Grand Central Station one day, is
incorrectly believed to have mugged a woman, and is escorted to
a psychiatric institution by the cops simply because he says that
he is from another planet.  (I'd like a dollar for every New Yorker
who thinks this: remember that New Yorkers ARE from another
planet and what's more they'd hardly be hauled away to a looney
bin for saying so.)  Dr. Mark Powell is assigned his case and
takes an interest in the man because Prot is the smartest patient
he knows.  In the film's best one-up line, when Prot goes against
regulations in his comments to the patients, the doctor warns 
him that Prot's role is not to try to cure others.  That is the
doctors' job.  "Then why aren't you curing them?" Prot replies.  

   "K-PAX" goes wrong every time is milks the story for goo...the
ways that Prot is able to make dramatic progress with the
patients when doctors can do virtually nothing with them...the
idyllic suburban scene featuring the Powell family with Golden
Labrador Retriever, loving and sympathetic wife (Mary
McCormack), the motif of man-in-second-marriage-with-
estranged-son-from first.  The film goes along just fine when Prot
wows the astrophysicists with knowledge of outer space that he
could not possibly have known if he were a mere human being. 
There is an interesting casting decision here, as Jeff Bridges is
not on the other side of the desk from the time he played the
Starman in 1984, abducting Karen Allen and gaining her affection
because he looks almost exactly like her dead husband.  

   Unfortunately, if you think there's anything new here, you ought
to get out more often.  Loving father looks adoringly at his two
sleeping daughters.  Supportive wife.  Indifferent medical staff. 
Amazed scientists.  If only Dr. Powell set his alarm when he took
a nap on July 27, we might have gotten to the bottom of his
patient's identity.

Rated PG-13.  Running time: 120 minutes.  (C) 2001 by
Harvey Karten, [email-masked]

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