I got the feeling, while watching “Shrink” starring Kevin Spacey, that this movie was trying to emulate “Crash.” You know, the intersection of random characters where by movie’s end, you’ve made significant discoveries. And ‘Shrink” does touch on some meaningful topics, but its characters are too sketchy, their connections too contrived and the investigation too superficial. The only thing that holds this movie together is Spacey’s skill as an actor. Dr. Henry Carter (Spacey), psychiatrist to the stars, is conflicted. His wife recently committed suicide and for all of the self-help books he’s written, Carter believes he can’t help himself let alone other people. So he spends his waking hours in a marijuana haze and his nights drinking enough booze so he’ll pass out where he is and he won’t have to sleep in an empty bed.
Carter’s patients run the gamut of Hollywood types and they flit in and out of the story. There’s Jack (an uncredited Robin Williams), an alcoholic movie star who worries about his possible sexual addiction while refusing to acknowledge his drinking problem; Patrick (Dallas Roberts), a super-agent suffering from extreme obsessive-compulsive disorder; Daisy (Pell James), Patrick’s pregnant assistant who dreams of being a producer; and Kate (Saffron Burrows), a beautiful actress with a cheating husband recognizing that she is no longer the young starlet. The one standout is Jemma (Keke Palmer), a troubled African-American teenager and avid movie fan, that Carter treats pro bono. It doesn’t feel real when these characters interact with Carter and each other. This is especially evident whenever Jeremy (Mark Webber), a friend of Carter’s, is onscreen. Except for Spacey’s bleary-eyed therapist desperately seeking his own solutions, “Shrink” doesn’t offer much. 7/30/09
1 comment:
"Shrink" is a muddled, kind of bizarre drama that carries a message but it’s hard to find. This story includes a therapist who is more in need of therapy than the patients and an actor who's sexual appetite is legend played by Robin Williams (who wasn’t even shown in the actor’s credits). The peculiar thing about this film is Patrick, a Hollywood agent who starts out with every mania/phobia known to man, and seems to be remarkably cured by mid-movie. The most distracting aspect of this movie is the marijuana smoke that permeates every scene......I was dizzy leaving the auditorium when the movie ended. I rate this odd-ball film at about a 2 bagger out of a possible 5 (popcorn) and I predict that it is going nowhere at the box office.
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