Kevin Spacey is an excellent actor. If there's a movie he's in where he isn't brilliant, then you don't seem to be able to remember him actually being in it - some actor just delivered a solid performance. Jeoff Bridges has consistently performed well too, showing a range of styles from 'The Dude' in the Big Lebowski through to a lecturer in Arlington Road and the President in The Contender. Unfortunately it's this intellectual-type character that he's playing in K-Pax, rather than The Dude, where he takes the role of a psychiatrist, Dr. Mark Powell, whose had another patient dumped on him by the city of New York.

This one's different than the others, because in the first minute of the film we see Prot arrive at a train station on a beam of light, and subsequently get arrested for a misdemeanour, and locked away in the psychiatric ward of a hospital.

Prot is 'the most convincing delusional' Mark has ever come across. He walks funny, acts funny. He believes funny things. And above all else he's convinced all his fellow patients that he's from K-Pax and that he can take one of them with him when he retuns. It takes a truly crazy man to convince a bunch of crazies to forget their own delusions and focus on his. The only person not convinced is Mark. K-Pax is the feel good story of Mark trying to come to terms with Prot's alien origins as he strives to help what is obviously just a disturbed man, as Mark himself comes to realise that he must live life to the fullest and appreciate his family.

Yep, 'live life to the fullest', 'feel good story', there's no guns or hard core criminals here. There's no Jesus the sex offender. Nor is there naked teenage girls draped in rose petals. The film is too long. It needs a good fifteen minutes lopped out of the middle somewhere to drop it down from its two hour running time. It's a wait for video flick. While enjoyable, and it is enjoyable and quite often amusing watching Prot prove he is from K-Pax by convincing some of our world's greatest scientists of things he couldn't possible know, I don't feel there's enough there to justify the average lanner blowing $s at a cinema. It's a movie worth watching, but you definitely want to be able to hit pause, get a snack and check your email about three quarters of the way through. But K-Pax is the current date/girlfriend flick, so if you do get dragged along make sure you 'I told you so' her when she's looking bored with half an hour to go.

I'd give it 3 out of 5.

K-Pax opens nationally this Thursday, 28th of February. It is based on a novel by Gene Brewer, and has a running time of 120 minutes.