K-PAX

K-PAX is an entertaining and often quite funny drama about a man, Prot, who claims that he comes from another planet, K-PAX. He is admitted to a psychiatric hospital, since nobody believes him. That includes his doctor, Mark Powell, but he gradually begins to have doubts, for Prot is no ordinary patient. He has an unusual knowledge of his home planet, does strange things and on the whole has a remarkable influence on the other patients. Gradually Prot also comes to have a decisive significance for Powell's life and his way of thinking.

Even though Powell does not know what to believe, he nevertheless tries to find out who Prot might be, if indeed he is human. He gets on the trail of a certain Robert Porter, who has a tragic life story behind him, but is Prot Porter or what? The ending is suitably ambiguous, but also a little sentimental. The film is at its best at the beginning, in the interplay between Kevin Spacey's matter-of-fact and perceptive Prot and Jeff Bridges' gaping but earnest Powell, who faces the greatest challenge of his life, whereas later on it goes a little too much "Cuckoo's Nest" ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest").