There is a wonderful film, starring Jeff Bridges, about an alien who comes to Earth and changes the lives of those around him for the better.  That film is called Starman.  This review is about K-PAX, a not so wonderful film, starring Jeff Bridges, about an alien who comes to Earth and changes the lives of those around him for the better.  In Starman, Jeff Bridges played an alien who crash-lands on Earth and has a hard time fitting in.  In K-PAX, Jeff Bridges plays a psychiatrist who must treat a man who claims to be an alien, but other than wearing sunglasses all the time, he seems pretty normal or at least as normal as Kevin Spacey can be.  Spacey plays Prot from the planet K-PAX.  He "appears" at Grand Central Station and is whisked off to the loony bin before you can say ``Klaatu barada nikto."  Prot claims to have come to Earth on a beam of light just to hang out.  As is usual in these kind of movies, Prot's psychiatrist has more "head" problems than his patient.  He's a workaholic who is neglecting his young wife (Mary McCormack) and kids.  She is wife number two because he did the same thing with wife number one. And he is estranged from his son from the first marriage. This is just the kind of guy I'd want to be my psychiatrist!  Anyway, you'll be shocked to find out that Bridges is attracted to Prot and becomes obsessed with curing him. Meanwhile, Prot is curing Bridges who wakes up, well, sort of, to his family problems.  Oh, and Prot is curing all the other patients too. That's what good aliens do.  Life on K-PAX doesn't sound that inviting.  Maybe that's why Prot is spending so much time on Earth.  Anyway, Bridges doesn't think that Prot is really an alien and tries to use hypnotic regression to find out what trauma has caused Prot to think that he is Prot.  Bridges' theory is tested when he introduces Prot to some astronomers who take him to a planetarium and are wowed by his knowledge of the stars.  I'm happy to say that the astronomy is dealt with very accurately but I'm not as happy about the rest of the film.  Jeff Bridges is one of my favourite actors and Kevin Spacey is great but they are a bit wasted here.  The supporting cast includes all the people you'd expect to see in an insane asylum.  Alfre Wooodard, the most underutilized but great actress in Hollywood, is underutilized here.  Mary McCormack, who seems to be specializing in playing long-suffering wives (Mystery Alaska, Private Parts), plays Bridges' long-suffering wife.  Kevin Spacey has come to specialize in repressed characters but having Jeff Bridges do the same thing in the same movie leads to a lack of chemistry from all that repressed emotion.  Bridges and Spacey are both really good actors but they don't get to do much here.  Spacey wanders around through the whole movie wearing a Mona Lisa smile and Bridges gets to look worried.  Add to that, the predictability of the plot line and, well, it could have been better.  Anyway, K-PAX is not so bad but it made me want to go home and watch Starman.