By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 15 seconds ago
When a major actor gets canceled, the collective backlash against him can make it hard for people to discover some of their best work. It’s worse when some of their greatest films are hidden gems that baffled critics even before the cancellation.
Case in point: K-PAX was one of Kevin Spacey’s most ambitious films, and you can now stream this underrated gem on Hulu.
A Story 1,000 Light Years In the Making
The premise of K-PAX is that Kevin Spacey plays a mental patient who claims to be an alien from a planet (the titular K-PAX) a thousand light-years away. While it seems like he could just be another crazy person, this character slowly begins convincing everyone around him that he’s a visitor from the stars. Unless they can discover the truth about this unconventional alien in time, this star man may take his secrets with him when he beams back home.
The primary star of K-PAX is Kevin Spacey (best known for L.A. Confidential and American Beauty) as someone who might be a visitor from a distant planet or might be a mental patient completely wrapped up in his delusion. Meanwhile, Jeff Bridges (best known for The Big Lebowski) plays the doctor treating him, one who gets caught up in the bizarre mystery of whether his newest patient is something other than human. Rounding out the cast are some awesome character actors, including Mary McCormack (best known for Deep Impact), Alfre Woodard (best known for Star Trek: First Contact), and David Patrick Kelly (best known for Twin Peaks).
Welcome To Earth!
Sadly, K-PAX was a different kind of UFO: an unidentified flopping object. Against a budget of $68 million, it earned a much more earthbound sum of $65 million.
Audiences didn’t know what to make of this extraterrestrial adventure. The movie was a box office bomb, though it has since become a cult classic thanks to audiences rediscovering Kevin Spacey’s quirky, captivating performance.
When K-PAX came out, most critics decided the film was a close encounter of the turd kind. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has a critical rating of 41 percent, though the film notably has a much higher audience score of 75 percent. In general, critics praised Spacey’s nuanced performance but felt that this movie was too similar to Starman, a more polished extraterrestrial adventure that, ironically enough, featured K-PAX co-star Jeff Bridges in the leading role.
Impressing the Right Critics
Still, the movie managed to impress some big names, including legendary film critic Roger Ebert. He gave K-PAX three out of four stars and praised the movie for exploring “the difference between the delusional and that which is simply very unlikely.” His praise doesn’t surprise me, though, as this is one of those films that (a bit like a good X-Files episode) lets audiences choose whether to believe in the fantastic claims of an otherworldly character or simply embrace the more mundane possibility: namely, that this “alien” is just a human who’s crazier than a bag of cats.
Personally, I think that Kevin Spacey’s eccentrically electric performance is reason enough to give this film a shot. You know how captivating he was as a sleazy political dynamo in House of Cards? Imagine him channeling that charisma into an out-of-this-world performance as a man dreaming he’s an alien (or maybe an alien dreaming he’s a man), and you’ve got an idea why K-PAX is so weirdly compelling from beginning to end.
Out of This World Chemistry
Additionally, Spacey has awesome chemistry with co-star Jeff Bridges, and the two have perfectly imperfect vibes together. Spacey is all coldly aloof charm, whereas Bridges is all warmly amiable empathy, giving their scenes together a kind of elemental intensity. Every interaction positively crackles, ensuring that even the most routine scenes will keep you on the edge of your seat.
Will you agree that K-PAX is an underrated classic full of unforgettable performances, or is this one box office bomb you’d rather shoot back into space? You won’t know until you stream Kevin Spacey’s weirdest film on Netflix. Afterward, you’ll be asking the question that’s been haunting me for years: what if Frank Underwood was secretly an alien?!?
