Pair of Early Reviews of Spacey & Bridges' K-PAX!!

Hey folks, Harry here... The big spoilers in this film are not revealed but more of the plot certainly is. The overall feeling seems to be 'blah', seems that the film doesn't deliver as well as the trailer that was just released did. Now, that's not all she wrote for the films, because these are way way waaaaaay advanced screenings, and there is plenty of tinkering time for the film. Beware of those spoilers...

Harry and all:

Call me "Jack Wade." I'm a native Midwesterner set adrift out here in L.A., foraging for food and keeping body and soul together as a writer.

Last night I had the chance to see a "K-PAX" preview screening in Woodland Hills. A few nervous industry types were wandering around, as is usual in these affairs. Security was tight for some reason, although after seeing the film I couldn't understand why.

First of all, K-PAX is NOT science fiction. That may be the company line they're using to get geeks like us to see it, but it isn't true. And that fact becomes blindingly obvious at the midway point, where "K-PAX" derails.

We all know the story by now, from various leaks on the web: Kevin Spacey is a John Doe found wandering NYC's Grand Central Station. He's brought to a psychiatric hospital, where one of the head docs (Jeff Bridges) discovers that ol' Kev is actually Prot (pronounced "prote"), a visitor from the planet K-Pax who travels on beams of light. Or at least, that's what HE says.

Trouble is, Prot presents some very strange symptoms and phenomena. He's lucid and alert after a large, disabling jolt of thorazine. He knows things about a distant galaxy that only a handful of astrophysicists know. He's calm and rational, not at all a head case.

And then, IT HAPPENS.

I won't say what, but what HAD BEEN quite involving up to that point suddenly became just another "his dark secret is finally revealed" plot. You could chart the last hour from there. Except for the ending itself, which then tried to present a new "riddle" to supposedly put another twist into the story.

All these actors were terrific, especially Spacey, who is a trained, licensed professional at playing distant, quirky characters. Bridges has the thankless role of the psychiatrist who has to unlock Prot's BIG SECRET. Of course, in his personal life, the doc is more of a space man than Prot is, distant to his wife and kids. That is, until Prot teaches him the meaning of happiness.

* Y A W N *

All of this is surrounded by symbolism and motifs that fail to pay off. A prism-type paperweight on Bridges' desk catches and disperses a lot of light but does not figure into anything. A sizable portion of time is spent by the camera looking at it. though.

Call this "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" meets "Starman," with a soupcon of "Rainman" thrown in. It's interesting and suspenseful as hell, but it is so schizophrenic and disjointed after the midpoint that you feel as though you yourself have traveled on a beam of light ... into another theater, to watch an entirely different movie.

Yer buddy,

Jack (as in "You Don't Know")

And now a look by a very big Spacey fan that goes by the name of SOZE...