'K-PAX': PSYCHODRAMA IS MORE THAN A LITTLE SPACEY.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

When Kevin Spacey's thinks-he's-a-spaceman mental patient tells his psychiatrist, ``For an educated person, Mark, you repeat things quite a bit,'' he essentially summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of the movie ``K-PAX.''

An unacknowledged Americanization of the Argentine movie ``Man Facing Southeast'' (for the record, ``K-PAX's'' producers claim never to have seen that film, and so does Gene Brewer, the author of the novel upon which ``K-PAX'' is based), this production is mildly clever and certainly well-spoken. But it's predictably repetitive in its own way, brimming with cliches about how craziness is hard to distinguish from enlightenment and doctors who need to heal themselves. Oh yeah, and a lot of the time, in their nuttily adorable way, the lunatics take over the asylum.

Spacey has a jolly good time as the self-proclaimed Prot, benign visitor from the distant planet K-PAX. Sent to what must be the friendliest mental ward in New York after telling a cop the sunlight on Earth is too bright, Prot initially dominates his therapy sessions with slightly worn Dr. Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges). A font of common-sense commentary on human foibles, detailed information about his planet and its star system, and enjoyably showy quirks (a lover of terrestrial produce, Prot happily devours unpeeled bananas), he soon intrigues Dr. Powell as the most impressive delusional he's ever met.

Others, mainly his fellow patients and some credulous ward attendants, are inclined to believe Prot's story. His whispered advice to various mental cases seems to help them - in the short run, anyway - and his promise to bring one of them back with him to K-PAX engenders the kind of hope that a gutsier movie would have examined more critically. But Prot even dazzles a bunch of professional astronomers with his knowledge of little-known facts about the universe, so maybe ...

For his part, the perfectly nice but somewhat workaholic Dr. Powell needs to get in better touch with his family. Prot, who claims the family concept doesn't exist on K-PAX, is clearly going to inspire him to do so. Now, if Powell can just figure out why his patient really feels that way, the truth about Prot may emerge.

There's one of those hypnosis sequences that the film takes very seriously but requires a high degree of gullibility on an audience's part. Other unexplainable phenomena are brought up and then glossed over, mainly just to keep viewers guessing.

``K-PAX'' presented a formidable formal problem to its director, Iain Softley. So much of it involves Spacey and Bridges sitting in a room talking to each other that the filmmaker was forced to work up complex yet unshowy staging and lighting schemes in order to prevent kinetic torpor. With the aid of Spacey's lip-smacking hot-dogging and Bridges' solid (if, yes, repetitive) anchoring, Softley and his visual team - director of photography John Mathieson (``Gladiator'') and production designer John Beard (from Softley's last, quite excellent film, ``The Wings of the Dove'') - pull it off marvelously, keeping the film alive without calling too much attention to the effort they're making to do so.

For a story that we've seen in a dozen-odd incarnations before, ``K- PAX'' at least gives the impression of possessing a new way to look at things people like to see at the movies.

``K-PAX''

(Rated PG-13: violence, language)

The stars: Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges, Mary McCormack, Alfre Woodard, Saul Williams.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Iain Softley. Written by Charles Leavitt, based on Gene Brewer's novel. Produced by Lawrence Gordon, Lloyd Levin and Robert F. Colesberry. Released by Universal Pictures.

Running time: Two hours.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Two and one-half stars

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``1. Organize fishing trip. 2. Teach fellow patients basketball ...'' Kevin Spacey makes a few notes in the mental ward after claiming to come from outer space in ``K-PAX.''