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Review: K-PAX 215

Posted by JonKatz from the alien-as-healer? dept.
The idea that lunatics in asylums are the only really sane people in this crazy world has become a staple of American movies, from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to Girl Interrupted to K-PAX, a surreal, at-times-charming and curiously detached psychological drama starring Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges about the complex relationship between a self-proclaimed alien and an alienated psychiatrist. Spoilage warning: plot is discussed, but not ending. The film is more timely than it could possibly have intended to be.

There is at least one new twist at least in this tattered story line. Spacey's Prot, a visitor from the planet K-PAX, is a healing alien. Picked up by the police after a mugging in New York City, Spacey is - of course - not believed when he says he's from outer space and is tossed into a psychiatric hospital for a month. He tells the skeptical Bridges (Dr. Mark Powers) that he's from another planet. He has no mission, he's just traveling, curious about the odd and destructive behavior of humans and the high quality of their produce.

Powers doesn't believe him at first -- all of his fellow patients instantly believe naturally -- but then becomes curious as Prot proves impervious to even the most powerful anti-psychotic drugs, astonishes astrophysicists with his knowledge of far away solar systems, and begins healing deranged patients who've been confined for years.

Powers brings Prot to his house, with curious results that set the shrink off on a not very believable mission to New Mexico that he hopes will tell him who Prot really is. Along the way, the doc has the battle the usual assortment of impatient, cost-conscious and cynical bureaucrats.

Prot isn't worried about what any human thinks. He blithely insists to his captors that he's soon to head home on a beam of light to a planet where family is both unknown and unnecessary, and that he will take one person -- probably a fellow patient -- with him. This has particular resonance for Dr. Powers, who seems not to notice his gorgeous wife or adorable kids. But Prot's utter, unrelenting cool leaves us detached from the movie as well as him.

Spacey is so ironic and low-key it seems he might well be from another solar system. He has played this kind of ironic character a bit too often, and Prot doesn't come close to the blow-out portrayal of Lester Burnham's suburban bust-up in American Beauty.But tension does build as we get curious about whether he is really an alien or not, and whether or not he will go back to K-PAX. (Also whether Powers will notice his wife and what's-really-important-in-life.)

The ending turns out to be the most inventive part of the movie. It's actually quite ingenuous, leaving people wondering about what they really saw and ought to conclude from it. This is one of those very rare endings that a dozen people can see and draw completely different conclusions from.

And K-PAX is a particularly relevant movie this week, since one of its themes is that we ought to appreciate life while we can. It's pleasant and soothing.
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Review: K-PAX More

Review: K-PAX

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  • Ending not consistent (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I dont' want to give it away, but his body remains while the other person's doesn't. What's the deal?
    • A couple different ways you can reason it...

      He's not an Alien... She just decided to leave and escaped

      He "possesed" Rober Porters body and used him as a means of healing Dr Marko, making him realize the importance of family... and The other's body was part of Betty's escense and left with her

      I think it's main purpose was to just make you think a little.

      I wonder if the books have a different ending, anyone read them?

    • Hey Katz,

      Is the spoilage warning *really* necessary? I mean, you do write weekly movie reviews on Slashdot and the warning is always the same. In addition to that, the warning is nothing out of the ordinary for a typical movie review. We expect the plot to be disscussed without giving away too many details.

      Sigh.

      Sorry if this sounds too negative. I'm just anxious to see Monsters Inc., Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings. Would Slashdot please post a story or two regarding these three movies?

    • Someone else's idea [universalpictures.com] [universalpictures.com] about the ending
    • You don't want to give it away, of course. Sigh.
  • This is one of those very rare endings that a dozen people can see and draw completely different conclusions from.

    holy crap, i agree with Katz for once?!? no way. regardless i liked the movie.

  • Saw it : Ending insteresting, but disappointing. (Score:3, Informative)

    by slashkitty ( 21637 ) on Sunday October 28, 2001 @11:41AM (#2489730) Homepage
    In the end, Bridges fails to heal even one person. The only thing he might have done is turn this fuctioning alien into a comatose patient. Prot was the only one actually helping people, and his entity took of on a beam of light. While Prot couldn't take his own (borrowed) body with him to k-pax, he could take someone else's.

    The movie is a cute flick, but it is heavy on the dreamy musical scenes and light on a real story.

    • What about healing himself? That was one of the major themes. Prot at on point mentions this.

    • I thought that the story progressed in a normal manner for a movie with a more relaxed tone. It's over 2 hours long and i didn't get bored. Ever scene added to the story. If you thought this was light on story, you must be really bored in most films.

      I also thought that the "dreamy musical scenes" were very well done and the cinematography was brilliant.
      • Well, I did say it was interesting, more interesting then most films, but disappointing. The whole part about tracking down what had happened to prot 5 years ago does nothing to help prot get better. The end is just depressing. Except for the rich, well off doc, is finally talking to his son again. Big deal. Why did he stop talking to him in the first place? The doc is just a big self centered jerk, and only crazy people where doing anything useful.

  • But... (Score:4, Funny)

    by spellcheckur ( 253528 ) on Sunday October 28, 2001 @11:46AM (#2489736)
    What? Jeff Bridges skeptical about alien life?
    I'm not buying it; he's the Starman! [imdb.com].


    Then again, this is the same director that brought us Angelina Jolie as a l33th4x0r [imdb.com].

  • I saw this movie last night and absolutely loved it. The imagery was so visually intoxicating that I couldn't peal my eyes from the screne. My take on the ending: Prot used Robert's body to actually walk and talk, etc. IE. the form of the soap bubble. Since Prot could sense UV light and had way too much information about the solar system, he could not have just been a super-savant.

    In the end when all the mental patients said that the person on gurney was not Prot was a bit confusing, and the fact that Bess did disapear is interesting.

    However, Robert could have just gone crazy. Robert as a child could have spent countless hours staring into a clear new mexico sky observing and calculating etc. The eye test could have been a mistake or after the near drowning, his eyes could have become very sensative to light, although I doubt sensative to UV.

    All in all - very interesting. I won't lie tho, I just love Kevin Spacy.
    • In the end when all the mental patients said that the person on gurney was not Prot was a bit confusing, and the fact that Bess did disapear is interesting.

      This was meant to give another indication that Prot was just borrowing Robert's body for his visit. The patients, who could look past the mere appearance and "psychosis," could tell that it wasn't Prot, even though the physical body was the same. They understood Prot on a slightly different level than the unbelievers (eg, the psychiatrists), and the movie gives that indication with the discussion about the sunglasses. When Prot leaves to go "up north," the patients know he's coming back because he took his sunglasses, which he wouldn't need on K-PAX. This is intended to be metaphor for the body he's using. He won't need that back on K-PAX, either. And even though it's left behind when he leaves in the end of the movie, the patients can tell it isn't him.

      As to Bess's disappearance, it reinforces Prot's existance. The symptoms of Bess's illness (never talking, and hardly ever moving) do not lend much strength to the theory that she simply broke out of the hospital. Especially due to the statement made earlier by the high-up chairwoman figure when Prot took his short leave, that "people don't break out of this hospital," leading you to believe it has nice beefy security.
    • Something I was curious about, is at the ending when he is beeing wheeled out on the gurney it looks like Robert is in entirely different clothes than Prot was. At first I thought that Prot may just have been another personality that lived inside Robert (the only way to explain the hypnosis), and a very old one at that. However at the end you have Robert, someone who is understandably catatonic wearing different clothes - and (what appears to) not have the UV affliction of the eyes. Easily put this movie was an analysts wet dream because it seems to me that at the ending you are led to believe whatever you want to believe - even though there is evidence that points to something else.

    • The movie was not consistent enough with *any* of the possible plot lines, much less all of them.

      If Prot was an alien intelligence inhabiting Robert's body -- How did he have UV vision?

      If he was just crazy -- explain the UV vision or talking to the dog.

      If Prot was a completely separate body -- why did he react so emotionally under hypnosis? Why did he freak out about the sprinkler?

      Don't get me wrong -- I really enjoyed the movie. I just wish it had been done with a little more thought to the different scenarios to make them all plausible -- or any of them plausible for that matter.

      I think it could have had a truly great ending like Sixth Sense, where everything up to the end takes on a different meaning. I've seen it 4-5 times. I am amazed at how perfectly equivocal every scene is, while maintaining the appearance of a single plot line.

  • Great movie! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Chrios ( 514186 ) on Sunday October 28, 2001 @11:48AM (#2489740)
    I thought K-PAX was a great movie. Compared to the crap I saw this summer, I left thoroughly impressed. What this review leaves out is how funny this movie is. I was laughing all throughout the movie and so was the audience.

    One comment I had to make was on this quote:

    "Spacey's Prot, a visitor from the planet K-PAX, is a healing alien".

    Well not really, he can just see what human treatment leaves out. He never intended to end up in some psychiatric board to help the patients out. He doesn't have some special designation that he is a healing alien. He can just see things differently.

    The rest of the article is pretty accurate. K-PAX has been getting different reviews, many good, some bad. But go see it your self. I highly suggest seeing the movie, you won't regret it.
  • I like how in the preview he says that K-Pax is X of *your* light years away. As if light years was some peculiarly human measurement.
    • the 'year' part of light year is a human peculiarity.
      • blast. beat me to it.

      • Measurement of time and distance is also a "human peculiarity," so far as we know.

        However, saying we did encounter a non-human civilization, they would have a different term for year, i.e. poon. The Poontang peoples would call it a "light-poon" and would presumably know that a "light-year" is different. And that's assuming they spoke "our English" (as opposed to "their English").

    • well?

      how long is a year if you aren't living on earth?

      • how long is a year if you aren't living on earth?

        A year is a year no matter what planet you're living on. Do you really think aliens on another planet have a unit of measurement called a "year" which is the amount of time that it takes their planet to circle their sun? Somehow I doubt it.

        • Point is, some planets take longer to swing around their sun than other planets. Hence light will travel different distances within those different time frames and on one planet a light year will be a different distance than a light year on another.

          Even despite the fact that a year is how long a planet take to swing around a star and that light speed is constant.

          • Even despite the fact that a year is how long a planet take to swing around a star and that light speed is constant.

            A year is not "how long a planet take[s] to swing around a star". A year is "how long the Earth takes to swing around the sun". That's the point I'm making, anyway.

    • Umm..it is. It's how far light travels in the time it takes the Earth to revolve around the sun once.

    • You think the Earth-Sun year is some kind of galactic standard? Hell, there are nine major years, and a buttload of minor ones, right here in this solar system.

      • I have a feeling you don't know what a light-year is. I'll let you look it up on Dictionary.com [dictionary.com].

        • You might want to look up lightyear on that link you just posted. It says that a lightyear is the distance light travels in a year. A year is a human construct based on the time it takes our planet to go around our sun. Beings from another planet wouldn't use the lightyear since it's only relevant to our planet. Like another posted said, Uranian lightyears would be a measurement of a vastly different amount of distance since Uranus takes so long to go around our sun.

          • Here's what you are not getting. "Light-year" is English, and means a set number of miles in English, however provincial the etymology. Saying "your light-years" is like saying "your miles." Hey, if we are gonna speak english with the Poontangians, they are going to have something other than miles and years to deal with. There will be conversion tables, presumably, but if we have any intimacy with these people, they won't say "your miles" and "your light-years." The "your" is redundant.

            • >Hey, if we are gonna speak english with the
              >Poontangians, they are going to have something
              >other than miles and years to deal with. There
              >will be conversion tables, presumably, but if we
              >have any intimacy with these people, they won't
              >say "your miles" and "your light-years."
              >The "your" is redundant.

              Not necessarily.

              While they may not measure distance in miles, or time in years, "light year" DOES mean "the distance light travels in the time it takes the Earth to make one orbit of the Sun".

              Hence, their home planet WILL have an equivalent measurement, it may just not be one measured in a "year" or "miles".

              But there WILL be a unit equal to the distance light travels in the time it takes THEIR planet (Poontangia? When's the next flight?) to make one orbit of THEIR sun.

              Hence, "your light-year" is correct. "Their light-year" will be more or less (well, there's a CHANCE it's not, but let's be realistic...), but the unit DOES exist.

              -l
              ...shaking his head because he said "let's be realistic" in this discussion...
              • Let's try this one more time. A European, speaking with an American, might say "your miles" and "my kilometers," but the "your" and "my" are redundant. It's understood that "miles" and "kilometers" are measurements in different systems.

                In interplanetary communications, I believe we can safely assume that English-language terms "miles" and "light-years" would be exclusive to our "Earthian" measurement system. Others may have a measurement roughly analagous to "our" light-year, but who would use the term "light-year" to refer to it? If they call a year a theqq and call Light narr, it would be a narr-theqq. So would we have to say "your" narr-theqq? I don't think so. A narr-theqq is a narr-theqq, a light-year, a light-year.


                • Well, you DID mention that we would be communicating in English. I'm unaware of any English dialect that uses "narr" and "theqq" for "light" and "year", but IANAL (linguist).

                  Hence, their narr-theqq would translate to light-year. Your and their would have to be used to designate which concept we're referring to.

                  Sure, if we use the native terms of narr-theqq and light-year distinctly from each other, the "your" and "their" would be unnecessary, but if we're translating into our own native languages, as you clearly stated, the "your" and "their" would be required.

                  Get it?

                  -l
                  ...who still can't believe he got drawn into such a pedantic argument on /.

                  • I get it. But, taking the assumption that they ever did decide to use the completely artificial means of measuring distance by light's travel in a year (if you think of it, an absurdly arbitrary measure), we would not translate their "theqq" as year, it would be a Poontang-year. Hence, their narr-theqq would be a light-poontang-year in English though, out of courtesy, I expect we would adopt narr-theqq in conversation (and we would probably include a table of their measurement system in the next dictionaries, with our best phonetic equivalents to their words).

                    Or we could just stick to parsecs.

                    • >Or we could just stick to parsecs.

                      Wait, would those be our parsecs or..

                      Oh, nevermind.

                      [grin]

                      -l
                    • >Come to think of it, all units of distance are ``completely artificial''

                      There's got to be a unit of [ distance / time / mass / volume ] we can devise that's not completely artificial in the sense that it can be used to meaningfully measure something across cultural (even planetary or galactic) boundaries.

                      Mass would be the trickiest, I would assume, since we base it on the effect local gravity has upon the object being measured.

                      Our time is based upon local planetary cycles, so becomes largely meaningles to someone with a longer or shorter orbit around their local star. However, on a non-physical communication medium (radio, microwave, laser) we can express a unit of time ("From this beep to this beep...").

                      Volume is also double-edge, since it relies on units of distance and a way to express them in three dimensions.

                      It seems distance is the easiest starting point, since on a probe or other physical object another culture might acquire we can illustrate one Foo, and use simple pictograms to express that there are ten Foos to a Bar (more during rush week, but I digress...).

                      It all comes from finding a common stating point. If we can start with time, we can come up with distance (distance being expressed as how far light travels in x time, back to the light-year concept). If we start with distance, we can express time (how long it takes light to travel x distance). From these we can express volume, then the trick comes down to expressing mass.

                      All of these constructs are still completely artificial and arbitrary, though.

                      I don't know enough chemistry or physics to know if we could somehow use expressions involving subatomic particles (which one would EXPECT to be relatively constant, right?) to express a starting point for mass, but then we're back to how to illustrate the other ideas.

                      I'm glad this isn't MY problem to solve...

                      -l

                    • ?You're confusing mass with weight. Even in zero
                      >gravity, objects have mass. You can define mass
                      >independently of the local gravitational field
                      >using inertia. That is, the harder it is to get
                      >something moving (or to stop something that's
                      >moving), the more mass it has.

                      Well, except that around these here parts, we measure mass by weight, for convenience's sake.

                      >Time is simpe to define in a standard way that >isn't specific to the motions of the planets in
                      >our solar system. For example, you can
                      >define "one second" to be 9,192,631,770
                      >oscillations of a cesium-133 atom

                      I figured there was something like that. That's pretty cool. Thou art more chem-literate than I. Way more. But since I never got around to it in school, most people are. Still cool though.

                      >Heck, even your wristwatch uses a conceptually >similar oscillating quartz crystal to keep time

                      Actually I use my pager for a timepiece since the battery died in my watch and I never got around to fixing it, but your point is still taken. Heh.

                      -l
            • ok ok ok ok.

              In the movie prot says, "your light-year" (emphasis mine). There, now you two can quit because it doesn't matter.
        • I have a feeling he DOES know.

          light-year also light year (ltyîr)
          n.
          The distance that light travels in a vacuum in one year, approximately 9.46 trillion (9.46 × 1012) kilometers or 5.88 trillion (5.88 × 1012) miles.

          The arbitrary term here is "one year", which means nothing to those from other planets. Even when the definition puts in in more concrete terms, miles and km are still purely human inventions of measure.

          In other words, even if aliens *did* decide to define long distances in terms of the speed of light and time, they wouldn't use Earth years as their measure of time, and they wouldn't know what miles or kilometers were.
          • Light years avoid the whole kilometer/mile issue.

            Light travels the same speed no matter how big the measurement units are. The numbers will change accordingly, the speed is something of a constant.
    • As if light years was some peculiarly human measurement.


      Well, do we know of any other species that uses "light-years" as a form of measurement?

    • Actually, it makes perfect sense. A light year is not a light year. A year is how long it takes a planet to orbit around its sun. So a year for Jupiter is much longer than an Earth year. THus, if there were people on Jupiter, and they were to define light year, it would have a rather different definition than ours.

      -Jenn
    • Myself, I prefer to use Uranian lightyears. It makes the stars so much closer!
    • The speed of light is a constant. A "year" isn't - it's the time it takes our planet to go once around the Sun.
    • At first I thought this too, light travels at a constant speed, so wouldnt light years be universal everywhere? The key is Years. A year is a year only on earth, it is an earth specific. If it was the distance light travels in 10^12 vibrations of a cesium atom or something, then it would be universally constant. Presumably a year on K-PAX is different than earth, so a K-PAXian light year would be a different distance.

    • Re:"mistake" (Score:2, Funny)

      by cburley ( 105664 )
      I like how in the preview he says that K-Pax is X of *your* light years away. As if light years was some peculiarly human measurement.

      No, he was distinguishing between "our" notion of light-years and George Lucas' notion.

      For most humans, a light-year is the distance light travels in a year (almost always Earth's year, of course).

      For George Lucas, based on Hans Solo's comment in Episode IV of the "Star Wars" tritrilogy, a light-year is a measurement of time.

      Since prot must have known he was talking to people who thought he was a loon, and that they might also assume he got his ideas about technical terms from movies like "Star Wars", he made sure they understood he was talking about distance, not time, by saying "your light years" instead of just "light years".

      See, use just one little possibly-redundant word like "your" and you generally avoid confusion and speed up understanding!

  • Ending (Score:4, Insightful)

    by p3d0 ( 42270 ) on Sunday October 28, 2001 @11:51AM (#2489747)
    I disagree about the ending. It seemed like a ham-handed way to make people think it's ambiguous, but by that point in the movie, I didn't really care any more.

    <SPOILER>
    I thought this was going to turn into a cool story about a person so traumatized by events in his family that he fantasized about a planet without families.

    I thought we had been given clues to this: for instance, if he has to leave at a certain time because of the scheduling of interstellar travel, then why is he leaving exactly five earth years after he arrived? Does everyone in the universe schedule their travel based on earth time?

    However, instead of turning and facing this head-on, they took the easy road and left it ambiguous.
    They could have used the ambiguity in Spacey's character as a way to explore various themes about human nature; but instead, that ambiguity itself is pretty much all there is to this movie.

    Incidentally, Spacey's performance was great. During the hypnosis, he has to portray a wide variety of characters, and he does it very convincingly.
    </SPOILER>

    In short, K-PAX is nothing but a premise: is he an alien or not? I don't need to sit in a theatre for two hours to grasp that premise.
    • I also thought that the "dreamy musical scenes" were very well done and the cinematography was brilliant

      I think your right about the 5 years. But perhaps he scheduled it to be exactly 5 earth years. Remember the movie leaves it open to interpretation about whether he is an alien or not.

      During the hypnosis he only portrays one character, Robert porter, not many.

      The movie is ambiguous throughout the movie to keep you guessing. I like how the movie ended, everyone I talk to has a different take on it.

    • Although there is a good deal of ambiguitity some things are quite set.

      - Prot can see ultraviolet light. Humans cannot see ultraviolet light. Thus, Prot is not human. While Prot inhabited the body of Robert, he had access to special abilities. These abilties didn't stay with Robert once Prot left.

      - Prot had astronomical knowledge that would have been impossible without him being from K-PAX. The suggestions given in the movie were that he looked it up (it hadn't been published), he was a savant (he didn't have access to the necessary equipment), or even that he was a missing astrophysicist (he would have been recognized by his colleagues).

      So it is nearly certain than an alien (Prot) was present in Robert's body until he left for K-PAX. It is extremely unlikely that Prot actually was Robert since near the end Prot spoke as if he was not Robert and he showed no signs of ever lying throughout the movie.

      So while his motivations for coming in the first place or returning can be debated, it does seem to be a fact that Prot was alien.

      carbonite
      • About the whole UV thing. Even if an alien did inhabit a human body, he would still only have access to *human* photoreceptors while using this human body. Human photoreceptors cannot detect UV light, no matter who's looking through them. But this brings the whole idea of "inhabiting someone else's body" into question, and spoiling all the fun. Whatever.
        • Actually, human blue photoreceptors can detect into the ultra-violet. The human lens is U.V. opaque (and slowly clouds up over a lifetime of absorbing ionising U.V. radiation). If you replace the human lens with a U.V. transparent artificial one, you can see into the U.V. range.
          No, this doesn't explain the U.V. abilities of Prot, but it's interesting anyway.
      • Prot can see ultraviolet light. Humans cannot see ultraviolet light. Thus, Prot is not human.

        Actually, it's my understanding that humans can see ultraviolet if they've had their lenses removed, for instance if they've had cataract surgery. The trick is that the lens has a slight yellowish cast to it that filters UV.

        It's said that during WWII, OSS parachute drops were made to targets laid out with UV beacons, using post-cataract-surgery spotters.

        As far as K-Pax goes, this is another nail in the idea that an alien could take over a human and see in UV; the requisite wavelengths wouldn't even reach the retina.
    • if he has to leave at a certain time because of the scheduling of interstellar travel, then why is he leaving exactly five earth years after he arrived? Does everyone in the universe schedule their travel based on earth time?

      So let me ask you a question. You live in New York and you go to China. While you're in China, are you going to plan your entire trip around United States Eastern Standard time? Of course not. You say "I'm going to leave China next Wednesday at 2AM." You say 2AM, but you mean 2AM locally - in China.
      • I think the point is that NYC and China have relative time intervals. One hour in NYC is one hour in China. When you are dealing with interstellar entities, the whole concept of time changes since (assuming that everyone acts as we do) time is measured by the positioning and behavior of celestial bodies (orbit, rotation, distance from light source, etc.). What the hell does 5 Earth years equal in K-Paxian time?

        For Prot to say that he is leaving in precisely 5 Earth years and then insinuate that this is because of conditions on K-Pax is a little unbelievable because the time reference from which his measurement is made has little bearing on the place that he is going.

        Of course we know that the real answer to this is that the whole "5 year" thing gives our hero reason to travel across the country and deliver a bit of important exposition.

        Lots of good Astronomy in this one.
    • It makes sense to me why he would have to leave x number of years to the day and minute. Perhaps his beam of light has to wait until the Earth is realigned with whatever light-path he took? So it must take 5 revolutions around the sun for his lightpath to reconnect to K-Pax. Just a thought :-)

      >>Does everyone in the universe schedule their travel based on earth time?
    • I have to disagree with you a bit, because I thought the ending was entirely unambiguous. It seemed, to me as if Prot was in fact truly an alien and truly a friend of Robert, merely occupying his body for a bit to take care of it and get Robert some help. What he did, why he came back, had a lot to do with simply getting Robert to an appropriate facility. One there, he left it, knowing that it would be well cared-for in the ward. It fits in perfectly with the rest of the movie: it explains his knowledge of space, his ability to see things that are beyond human range, his ability to simply disappear for a few days, as well as why, even in deep hypnosis, he continued to insist he was Prot. (While I don't know for sure, it would strike me that in hypnosis it shouldn't have been that hard to unearth the other personality if it were a multiple personality disorder, although this may be more of a technical flaw than anything else.) It also explains why Bes went away, and explains Spacey's statement near the end that "...But now that you've found Robert, take care of him," or however that line went specifically.

      Anyway, that was my interpretation, and I think it explains everything quite well. All you have to do is accept that Prot has ulterior (but nevertheless very good) motives, and there you are.

    • Re:Ending (Score:4, Interesting)

      by CleverNickName ( 129189 ) <.ten.notaehwliw. .ta. .liw.> on Sunday October 28, 2001 @04:31PM (#2490399) Homepage Journal
      ...why is he leaving exactly five earth years after he arrived? Does everyone in the universe schedule their travel based on earth time?

      Things like this happen in SF all the time. We would like to stay away from an "Earth-centric" view of things, but the people paying to see this movie are from Earth, and it's easier for them to grasp an Earth year, than it is to grasp a Jovian year, or a k-paxian year. Ultimately, it really doesn't matter to the vast majority of the audience, and, as a filmmaker, you'd rather have your audience ponder your film's (hopefully) deeper meanings, not how long a year was.
      • So why mention the scheduling thing at all? Why not come up with some other reason for the five-year stay?
        • because only us dorks on slashdot are going to get in a discussion about this meaningless little bit of triva with the movie.

          in other news, could it be that in exactly five years, the earth is in the same place in the sky as it is now, with the same side of earth pointing the same direction, and maybe in five years, k-pax is in the same place in the sky as it is now, with the same side of k-pax pointing the same direction. because you don't know k-pax's rate of rotation or revolution, you have no idea if this is valid. so why don't we agree that prot knows a lot more about it than we do, being that he knows both sides of the equation, and move on with our lives.
          • <SPOILER>
            You're right of course. That wasn't meant to be a nitpick. I was just giving it as an example of why I thought the movie would end with a definite indication that Prot was not an alien.

            Of course there may be reasons that it makes sense anyway: perhaps round-trip interstellar travel is always timed according to the destination's schedule. Who knows.
            </SPOILER>

      • Re:Ending (Score:3, Funny)

        by richie2000 ( 159732 )
        He was probably just on a five-year mission.

        (Yes, you may groan now. Go ahead, it'll make you feel better)

    • if he has to leave at a certain time because of the scheduling of interstellar travel, then why is he leaving exactly five earth years after he arrived? Does everyone in the universe schedule their travel based on earth time?

      Why not? Maybe the Earth's position at a certain point in its orbit was at the optimim angle/whatever for travel to Earth. That makes a lot of sense since we use orbit position to plan our space missions. So it would be logical to say "I'll be back in five Earth revolutions."

  • Now I will get flamed for this.

    -The ending turns out to be the most inventive part of the movie. It's actually quite ingenuous, leaving people wondering about what they really saw and ought to conclude from it. This is one of those very rare endings that a dozen people can see and draw completely different conclusions from. -

    I can't agree that this type of ending is rare. In fact it is rare in American cinema (compared to the mass of movies the country produces, I'm not saying there aren't any) but loads of european, asian, south american and even a few african movies display such a type of ending. Because the majority in North America just want to hear THX sound and see big guns and endings which you can guess at the beginning of the movie, doesn't mean that it's the same everywhere.
    Just my opinion though.

  • not a troll, but there are certainly better reviews out there. Check out salon [salon.com] for an honest review that goes beyond plot summary. As always, rotten tomatoes [rottentomatoes.com] has a plethora of opinions. Remember, there's more than Katz out there (thank god)
  • How did people interpret the scene where there faces are "merge" in the window when Dr Mark sees Prot for the first time?
    • I noticed this but forgot about it. This is certainly an interesting twist in a brilliant script that leaves a million people with differing opinions, all supported by the story.

  • What happens after the credits? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stripes ( 3681 ) on Sunday October 28, 2001 @12:16PM (#2489797) Homepage Journal

    During the credits the theater turned up the lights, so I couldn't read them very well. Nor could I really tell what happened after the credits ended and they showed about 15 more seconds of someone (Bridges?) doing something.

    What was it?

    (The theater claimed it was a MD state law that they had to turn on the lights when people start leaving. I don't know how long they have been doing it, I hadn't seen new movies in MD for a while...and I may decide never to again!)

    • Re:What happens after the credits? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      the good doctor (Bridges) was in his back yard at night. The short scene starts looking at the stars. You then realize it's the doctor looking. He slowly goes back towards his house as the camera pans away, but he's smiling and looking at the stars... Gives the impression that he believes, or wants to believe, that prot is up there...

  • lame (Score:1)

    by heff ( 24452 )
    k-pax was a cross between bicentennial man, patch adams, girl interrupted,and every retarded robin williams film since good morning vietnam.

    it was entirely way too over dramatized and hollywood-like for me.
  • Ok, did anyone notice if Prot was wondering around with a towel at all?

    (Sorry, hopeing for a Hitchhikers Guide reference in the movie.)
  • The only thing I'm wondering about this movie, after seeing the commercials with Spacey reading an animals mind, is whether or not this is another stupid 'extraordinary human/alien does corny magic tricks for audience' movie. When's the last time a movie with any mention of aliens, portrayed them in any sort of psychological way? If I were to believe hollywood, I would say that most alien lifeforms are pretentious freaks who should be immediately enslaved and forced to serve as interpreters to more interesting species; such as dolphins. What movie bothers to explain how or why most alien life has been given the powers of superman? Or how their superior minds somehow overcame the violent tendencies they charge us with; instincts that would've initially been necessary for the survival of their species (evolution is a dangerous road). Anyway, enough rambling. A good alien movie would be 90% exploration of life and culture on an alien planet, with the final 10% showing the arrival of freakish humans in a roving '4-wheeler'.

  • Sequel soon? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Schemer ( 717 )
    I was looking around on amazon.com and noticed that Gene Brewer, who wrote the K-PAX novel, already has written a sequel named On a Beam of Light [amazon.com]. There's an excerpt there also, but if you havent seen or read K-PAX yet, stay away, since it will spoil the ending.

  • Absolutely horrible (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by nvembar ( 125901 )
    I am going to ignore the offense I usually take at Slashdot posting movie reviews and reply to this one.


    This was an absolutely horrible movie with exactly one moment of inventiveness (see below). There was absolutely nothing that wasn't predictable, cliche, simplistic, and saccharine. Every person who came on screen with more than a few lines had their problems magically solved by prot in the most inane way possible. Work too much? Guess what, you'll come to appreciate your family! Have an estranged son mentioned in all of two scenes? I wonder if he'll be estranged by the end of the movie? Have OCD? Magic Jesus-analogue Kevin Spacey will make it all better.


    I truly can't believe anyone actually enjoyed this movie.


    As for the one inventive moment, it came at the end of the movie, as Jeff Bridges runs in slow motion to beat a digital countdown. The reason I consider this inventive is that the creators of K-PAX managed to throw in a completely unexpected movie cliche into a movie built entirely on other cliches. Note that I didn't put spoiler space around this because it was in the trailer.


    My full review will appear sometime early in the week at Revolution SF [revolutionsf.com]. It will be more coherent than the above, which was written out of sheer shock in seeing someone think that there was actually something original about K-PAX.

  • Where the hell does that movie say that normal people are more fucked up then crazy people?

  • New Review (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Accipiter ( 8228 ) on Sunday October 28, 2001 @12:45PM (#2489868)
    I hate to beat up a Katz review...(well, no, not really.), but I have to wonder what qualifies him as a movie reviewer? Bad grammar, inaccuracies, and the like seem to say "Hey, don't take this seriously."

    Spacey's Prot, a visitor from the planet K-PAX, is a healing alien.

    No, he's not. He even states that every being in the universe is capable of healing itself.

    Picked up by the police after a mugging in New York City

    ...a mugging in which he did not participate...

    He tells the skeptical Bridges (Dr. Mark Powers)

    This is probably over-analyzing semantics, but prot doesn't tell Bridges jack shit. The actor's real name belongs in the parenthesis, while the character's name - in this case, Dr. Mark Powell is the person with whom prot is conversing.

    ...and begins healing deranged patients who've been confined for years.

    Again, he doesn't heal them. He merely shows them the path to heal themselves.

    Powers brings Prot to his house, with curious results that set the shrink off on a not very believable mission to New Mexico that he hopes will tell him who Prot really is.

    I'm not entirely sure what this is supposed to mean.

    This is one of those very rare endings that a dozen people can see and draw completely different conclusions from.

    That just proves that the Katz writing style is sophomoric at best.

    Anyway, K-PAX is a great movie. prot (Kevin Spacey) is taken to a Psychiatric institute after having told New York police officers how bright the light is on Earth. Early in the movie, prot is introduced to Dr. Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges) who takes an immediate interest in his case. Eventually, prot has Powell, the staff of the institute, fellow patients, and top astrologers totally puzzled as to his true identity.

    K-PAX is said to lie about a thousand light-years from Earth (within the constellation Lira), and is where prot calls home. This story is obviously met with a certain amount of skepticism from the people of Earth, and the point of the movie is to work through that skepticism. By the end, the audience will draw vastly different conclusions regarding the story's ending, and it is these conclusions that give insight into each person's individuality.

    (Oh, and "prot" isn't supposed to be capitalized. That's how it works on K-PAX. :)
    • I kind of treat Katz like a horrific car accident: I know I'm going to be horrified by it, but I look at it anyway.

      I'm always stunned that someone with such poor writing skills and no real insights or originality can get *paid* to be a reporter. My god, my skills are at least an order of magnitude more refined than his, and I'm pretty sure I beat him on intelligence, but no one's off paying me to write trite pap!

      Dammit, maybe I should start sending out resumes. But, then... there wouldn't be any more car accidents to view on Slashdot.
  • Did the reviewer stay for the end of the movie? The ending was damned disturbing. If you're looking for pleasant and soothing, see something else, or skip the ending.
  • i haven't seen the movie and i don't think i will till i go see and iron monkey and troll the movies to full fill the 8.50 i had to pay to get in. wee. i read the book i think this movie was based of about five years ago.. the book was based of a psychology case study about a person that saw the world to alien to him. like the movie he though he was an alien. but the kicker is that in his world having sex was very painfull, the parents kick out the kids at a young age from the home. on the planet of k-pax i think, there is no property no one owns any thing. it was intresting book and it was short. you can read it in one sitting. the ending is sad he tells every one that he is going home on a certain day. on that day the docters can't find him in the psych building they find him in the basement naked in the fetal postion and half dead. my memory isn't that good so most of this post could be a construction of my own mind.
  • Will someone who has seen both film's please comment? I don't get out to the movies anymore, so if I see this movie it will be on Video, but it looks similar to a foreign film, Man Facing Southeast

  • So the bottom line of the movie is alien visits from outer space. Alien behaves in a funny way so we all laugh. Something spectacular happens at the end when the alien leaves. The movie has Jeff Bridges in it. Oh my god! K-PAX is a rerelease of Starman!!!!
  • I know Kevin Spacey and Robin Williams play different types of personalities, but does Jeff Bridges' character come to the same sort of realizations as he did in The Fisher King.

  • did nobody notice the data impression that prot constantly did?

    it was brilliant.

    i liked the movie - didn't expect too much, so i enjoyed myself.

    ~A
  • Along the movie, people in the theater were hoping for "dressing down" of traditional human practices more specifically related to the concept of experts who know better. The expectations were met until the New Mexico connection developed, a sympathetic disappointment settled in - the messiah is a false one with no magic tricks. Except for the one where he is going to ride the light home. There too it isn't clear if did or did not ride the light.

    People like things that either confirm to their existing models of perception of reality - serial killer/pscychotic/maniac etc. or plausible new ones with reasonable risk - ET/Encounter of Third Kind/ anything that doesn't fall within this range is conveniently moved under WTF. And that's what the movie is about. Suspend your conceived notions and apperance of reality. There's more to it than meets the eye. And ofcourse another thing, with the instant gratification mindset, people want things chewed and digested.

  • "The idea that lunatics in asylums are the only really sane people in this crazy world has become a staple of American movies, from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to Girl Interrupted to K-PAX , a surreal, at-times-charming and curiously detached psychological drama starring Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges about the complex relationship between a self-proclaimed alien and an alienated psychiatrist."

    The idea that the above is a major run on sentence, in which absurd claims are made to support what Katz seems to think is a clever idea, when in fact the idea is ludicrous at best, might tend to go overlooked because one is so busy trying to figure out if this guy ever saw a single film or play in which he didn't see correlations between things that clearly have none, not to mention his tendency to see everything in terms of Technology and Nerds ... boy does he write run on sentences.
  • Pleae, I can see no one has actually read the book.

    The planet is called "K-PAX" and his own name is "prot". K-PAX II is out in bookshops now, and K-PAX III is out next year, apparently.

  • The whole alien story was patched together from newsclippings and memos pinned to the corkboard behind Jeff Bridge's desk.

    K-PAX was some company's name on the coffee cup!

  • "12 Monkeys" had the whole "guy in the asylum saying stuff but nobody believing him" angle.
  • he could see ultra violet, remember? That's pretty unambiguous evidence that he's from K-PAX (or at least SOME other planet). There was the stuff about him being immune to the drugs and disappearing for 3 days to go up north too. But just the ultra violet part should be enough to take any ambiguity out of the movie, right?
  • Let's not forget 12 Monkeys, another great movie that involves an asylum and its inhabitants. It's a counterexample to the sane-people-thought-crazy notion, with Brad Pitt playing a character who is clearly off his nut, but is the first to be released (of course, along with the influence of his father). Hmm... is that a giraffe I see on the expressway?
  • -- Spoilers --
    • Jeff Bridges has two expressions in the film: "amazed" and "intrigued."
    • Kevin Spacey only directly cures one patient. The others are cured via events we don't see. How droll. This could have been *the* focus of the film.
    • The blue jay was computer generated. WHY?!? Real birds just too darn expensive? Hey, if I had known I would have invited Hollywood into my backyard.
    • Jeff Bridge's son should not have been introduced until the point where Spacey sees the photo in Jeff's house. This would have been the one surprise in the film and been a turning point in our understanding of Jeff's character. Sigh.
    • A psychologist would never invite a patient to his house. That was just stupid.
    • The entire film is spent watching Spacey's grin and listening to his "you humans" commentary. That's it. That's all. I was hoping for so much more. Jeff's "Starman" had more.

  • I think the whole movie could also be interpretted as kevin spacy being on ACID. thagts why his eyes were also dilated, and he was able to understand human psychoilogy so well and cure the patients (if you had ever take acid then you would know wha ti am talking about. also in 60s a lot of psychiatrists used LSD for understanding their patients better)

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