okpilak

At 41 minutes run time, just about right. It was the little touches that really set this apart. It was a Woody Edwards film (Ed Wood, anyone?) The flying saucers were saucers. Sputnik was circling the globe. There was stilted dialogue, and the professor was a perfect stereotype. Atrocious wig, always puffing on his pipe as he thought or considered action. And of course they had the town drunk in the cell after he reported what he saw. And a two person sheriff's office. The deaths were accompanied by copious amounts of spurting blood. This could have been lifted right out of the 1960's B-movie can. This movie knew what it wanted to be and nailed it.

Sam is really slacker, who feels an entitlement, but is also a parasite. He uses and lives off other people, on his quest for hidden and deep meanings, that really are meaningless. On the verge of being evicted for not paying rent, car repo'd and no interest in a job. What is real and what is hallucination, and do you care? The movie is really quite tedious and long. He manages to get one more day on his served eviction, when one knows he has no intention of paying the rent due. He is a charming liar. Some might say it requires more than one viewing to get the deeper meaning. Once is more than enough.

It is difficult to find something to dislike about this movie. Suddenly, with no one seeing him arrive, Prot (Kevin Spacey) appears in a crowded terminal, at the same time there is a mugging. Prot goes over to the woman, at the same time the police arrive. They took him as a suspect, until a witness said he wasn't, but in asking him questions, the police decided he was mentally different, so off to a psychiatric hospital. Prot insists he came from the planet K-Pax, and traveled by light. After several weeks there, he is sent to Mark (Jeff Bridges) for further evaluation. He doesn't seem to respond to drug therapy, and keeps insisting he is from K-Pax. And he weaves a very consistent story, and even knows things that are true, but almost no one else knows about. He makes a compelling story that he really is from K-Pax, and took on the form of an earthling. And in doing so, he helps a lot of others with their problems in the psychiatric wing. But what is the real story? And that adds to the fun of watching this movie. Every performance is really understated which adds to the charm.