Is K-PAX plagiarism?

Enrique · #1 08-26-2007, 02:34 AM

A friend of mine recommended the film "Hombre Mirando al Sudeste" and I saw it 3 years ago. It is an 1986 argentinian movie. When I saw it I thought "K-PAX must be a remake of this". I actually have told people this and I wrote it in a recent thread here (that "Hombre Mirando al Sudeste" inspired K-PAX). But I decided to google this up and found out that a novel came out in 1995 called "K-PAX". The author even made a trilogy. Maybe they are not that alike, but the two seem close to identical in plot when I saw them.
Here's the imdb summary of "Hombre Mirando al Sudeste":

A new patient mysteriously appears in a psychiatric ward. He claims to come from another planet to study humans and their behavior. The alien is gentle but criticizes humans for their harsh treatment of each other. The assigned psychiatrist is himself unhappy, and affected by the patient's insight. But he is ordered to treat the patient according to institutional procedure.

Here's KPAX:

Prot is a patient at a mental hospital who claims to be from a far away planet. His psychiatrist tries to help him, only to begin to doubt his own explanations.

Wikipedia does mention the resemblance to "Hombre Mirando al Sudeste".

diebitter · #2 08-26-2007, 02:50 AM

Well, it sounds exactly like plagiarism to me. I've red the book, and the description of the Argentinian film is word-perfect for K-Pax.

I guess you'd need to see that movie to know?

TheDudeAbides · #3 08-26-2007, 10:28 AM

It sounds like it, but like db said it would be tough to know without seeing the movie. I can tell you this though - KPAX was trite, contrived, and highly predictable.

disjunction · #4 08-26-2007, 01:40 PM

I'd give benefit of the doubt. I thought of this basic plot when I was 12. It's not that unique. It's kind of hard to have plagiarism by plot anyway, no? Two works can have the same basic plot. If not, I call dibs on "The Snark was the Boojum". [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

K-PAX is just "Stranger in a Strange Land" (alien lectures humans on how they suck) meets "We think mental patient is crazy. But maybe we are the crazy ones." But it was well executed and that's why I liked the movie.

Enrique · #5 08-27-2007, 11:47 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Well, it sounds exactly like plagiarism to me. I've red the book, and the description of the Argentinian film is word-perfect for K-Pax.

I guess you'd need to see that movie to know?

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe I should see the movies again to be sure, but when I saw the argentinian movie, I was certain K-PAX had to be a remake. They were just extremely alike.