Critics generally agree that Kevin Spacey lives up to his name in the
sci-fi (or is it?) movie K-PAX.
“Playing a droll alien is something of a
stunt role, the equivalent of a fat pitch down the middle for someone as
talented as Spacey,” writes Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles
Times, “and the satisfying thing about “K-PAX” is not that the actor
is good at it, but how he goes about making the role his own.”
Jay Carr
in the Boston Globe simply marvels at Spacey‘s work in the film:
“It is a beautifully modulated performance,” he writes, “with a wide and
subtle range of colors and feelings, and a delicious helping of deadpan
humor just for dessert.”
On the other hand, Jeff Bridges has the
unenviable role of playing what the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution‘s Eleanor Ringel Gillespie calls “straightman
to Spacey‘s spaceman.”
By and large, the movie is receiving lukewarm
reviews, the best of them from Rita Kempley in the Washington
Post: “Primarily, it’s a warm, fuzzy and funny duet between Spacey
and Bridges, one that brings to mind the interplay between Spock and
Kirk. The picture never quite reaches the stars, but it definitely rises
above much of what passes for entertainment today.”
However, Carrie
Rickey concludes in the Philadelphia Inquirer: “K-PAX is
much better served by its actors than by its screenwriters.”
