'K-PAX' is out of this world

by Ben Grabow
Staff Writer

K-PAX, the story of a seemingly alien Kevin Spacey, asks two big questions. First, is Spacey truly an extraterrestrial? And second, can anyone write a K-PAX review without a bad "Spacey" pun?

In this close encounter of the Spacey kind, we meet Prot — a man who "appears" one day in Grand Central Station looking like Bill Murray after a series of long nights. When Prot happens to bump into New York’s finest, he explains that he has arrived from his home planet of K-PAX on a beam of light.

Apparently, when police in Manhattan run into an indigent who says he’s just tripped the light fantastic from another galaxy, they immediately send him off to the finest psychiatric care that government money can buy.

And it is here, in the Manhattan Psychiatric Institute, that Prot meets Dr. Mark Powell, played by the wonderfully condescending Jeff Bridges. It is Dr. Powell’s duty to crack Prot’s shell and expose the nut inside. But the doctor has a deadline, as Prot claims he’ll be heading home at the end of the summer.

While Prot goes traipsing about the mental institution eating unpeeled fruit and riling up his fellow patients with stories about the many moons of K-PAX, the doctor is finding that more and more of his story is checking out. And more and more people are buying into the story.

But who can blame a wing of psychiatric patients for being so gullible? While Prot is little more than a mystery to his doctors, he’s nearly a messiah for his fellow loonies. He seems to represent a way out to everyone he meets. And there’s nothing a mental patient would like more than a way out.

K-PAX is essentially a story about the ways that we find our escape – by ignoring the things we choose to ignore or believing the things we want to believe. And some things are easier to believe when you want them to be true.

Such is the case with Prot. Spacey has an uncanny ability to cock his head a bit, smirk and make us believe anything. And the truth is, you’ll want to believe. That is the true measure of this movie – an audience’s desire to see Spacey step aboard a spaceship and sail off into the night.

But will he go back to his planet, or will he stay here with the rest of us? Is this man found wandering about New York City really as alien as we’d like to believe? Or is he little more than another institutionalized space cadet?

Between an interesting premise and the solid acting of the film’s two leads, one thing is certain. This is a story you'll want to believe.