History Film / KPax

* BizarreAlienReproduction: According to prot, the [=K-PAX=]ian mating process is profoundly painful and associated with a terrible smell.

* DawsonCasting: Kevin Spacey, especially in the flashback scene, as Spacey was 41 at the time of filming, whereas prot/Robert was 28 (and 23 in the origin flashback).

* DoctorDoctorDoctor: At the planetarium when Prot and Dr. Powell meet four astrophysicists. [[http://www.metacafe.com/watch/an-_PIsJmY2nhbmmY/k_pax_2001_planetarium/ See the clip here.]]
-->'''Prot:''' "Doctor — Doctor — Doctor — Doctor. How many doctors are there on this planet?"

* AdaptationalHeroism: A slight example in Russell, the highly religious patient. The book has him being very antagonistic to prot, considering him to be the work of the Devil and wanting nothing to do with him. The film keeps him in the background, but asks if he can take his Bible to K-PAX.

* HollywoodPersonalityDisorders: The patients of Dr. Powell.

* GenderFlip: Dr. Klaus Villars, a white, bearded, German-accented, classically Freud-reminiscent psychiatrist in the novel becomes Dr. Claudia Villars, a female black American in the film.

* NapoleonDelusion: One of the patients is a woman who claims she is the Queen of England.

** Though he doesn't get nearly as irate as in the novel, the first time prot is noticeably annoyed by Powell is when he tries to ask about how crime on K-PAX is punished, and he proceeds to launch into a prolonged lecture on how flaws and stupid the "eye for an eye" mentality behind the human criminal justice system is.

* BerserkButton: Though he doesn't get nearly as irate as in the novel, the first time prot is noticeably annoyed by Powell is when he tries to ask about how crime on K-PAX is punished.
** He does however essentially dodge the question with his rant and never actually answers it.

* TheShrink: Psychiatrist Dr. Powell is Type 2. He does want to help his patients and truly cares abotu him, and while he acknowledges medications can be useful aids he prefers not to rely on them and recognizes they can sometimes do more harm than good. His critical hinderance as a doctor is that he can't emotionally connect with his patients and see their problems from their angle. This is evident in his first scene, where he lets Ernie ramble about germs without paying much attention to him, dismisses his concerns, and tells him he wants him to start sleeping again because "sleep is good!" This is what allows prot to work towards curie Ernie and Howie, which infuriates Powell (and in the novels, Brewer grumbles of some of his ideas "why didn't I think of that?").

* ArtisticLicenseMedicine: Powell could very likely lose his license to practice medicine with how he treats prot. For just one example-discussing his handling of a patient with others.
** Maybe. The only people outside of the facility he discusses prot with are his family. But he also never names prot, so it's little different than a writeup in a medical journal would be. Things like bringing prot to the planetarium or the picnic are done in an attempt to cure him by seeing him in a family setting and attempting to disprove his delusion.

* PrecisionFStrike: In the film.

* TheShrink: Psychiatrist Dr. Powell is Type 2. He does want to help his patients and sees medication as a useful aide and not a universal solution, but it's evident early in the film where he doesn't fully listen to Ernie and casually tells him he needs to start sleeping again because "sleep is good!", that he has trouble connecting with his patients.

* AliensSpeakingEnglish: Dr. Powell specifically asks about this, given prot's complete mastery of unaccented, idiom-filled English. prot responds that English is not a difficult language to learn compared to his native language, the name of which alone is about ten syllables long and contains multiple grunts and clicks.

* TraumaInducedAmnesia: [[spoiler: The murder of Robert Porter's wife and young daughter, followed by his killing of the murderer, and then his attempting suicide. The question is whether it turned him into a disassociative-personality delusional with savant-like intelligence, especially for astronomy, or if it was the catalyst for his lifelong alien friend prot to reunite with him.]]

* AmbiguousEnding: [[spoiler:Hoo boy...]]

* AdaptatinalHeroism: A slight example in Russell, the highly religious patient. The book has him being very antagonistic to prot, considering him to be the work of the Devil and wanting nothing to do with him. The film keeps him in the background, but asks if he can take his Bible to K-PAX.

An adaptation of the [[Literature/KPax 1990 novel of the same name]], ''K-PAX'' is the story of a clinical psychiatrist (Creator/JeffBridges) who takes on a patient claiming to be an extraterrestrial from an advanced alien civilization. The patient (Creator/KevinSpacey), named prot (rhymes with "goat" and spelled with all lowercase letters) displays vast academic knowledge and remarkable philosophical outlooks, which begin having positive effects on the patients and staff of the Manhattan Psychiatric Institute... while leading to increasing uncertainty over his true origins.