K-PAX (12)

K-PAX, the unusually titled new film from Kevin Spacey, is a real space oddity.

Spacey's character Prot (which rhymes with boat) is arrested by police officers at a New York subway after professing to being a visitor from another planet.

He is taken to a Manhattan psychiatric hospital where he meets the friendly, compassionate but strictly rational shrink Dr Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges).

So convincing is Port that he is from the planet X-PAX, after all he can see ultraviolet light, has knowledge of planetary alignments that astounds astro physicists and disappears for days on end apparently to travel by the speed of light to the North Pole, that the cynical doctor starts to explore the possibility that he is in fact an alien.

Prot is also an inspiration to the inmates of the hospital and encourages them to leave their demons behind and confront their fears.

He tells them that he is returning soon to his home planet for good and says that he can take one person back with him.

They all clamour to be the chosen one and escape into the sunset with him.

This is familiar territory that was covered by Jack Nicholson in the vastly superior, but vaguely similar, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, which it instantly resembles.

While the film starts off as an interesting, if largely unoriginal, idea it soon nose dives. Although it is an ambitious work by director Iain Softley, he is good at ducking the real issues.

As the preachy Prot extols the virtues of his home planet, which he says does not suffer the stupidity and violence he claims that is inherent in Earthlings, he fails to offer any solutions to the world's obvious woes.

Fudging the issue completely he says condescendingly that we would not be ready for the answers.

Spacey and Bridges are, it is widely accepted, both excellent actors but this is a very disappointing film which is sure to have people asking themselves why they bothered to endure it for over two hours.

They will be none the closer to solving the mysteries of the universe because of it.