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Reviews Counted:47
Fresh:12
Rotten:35
Average Rating:4.5/10
Consensus: Kevin Spacey's performance is almost sharp enough to save Shrink, but in the end, he's dragged down by a cliched script and indifferent direction.
Theatrical Release:Jul 24, 2009 Limited
Box Office: $93,250
Synopsis: What happens when the people we count on to hold us together...are barely holding it together themselves? Jonas Pate's Shrink is a striking, fast-paced expose of the "other" Hollywood, featuring... [More]
Starring: Kevin Spacey, Mark Webber, Keke Palmer, Saffron Burrows
Director: Jonas Pate
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Coincidenceville would have been a better title for Shrink, the film in which psychiatrist Henry Carter (Kevin Spacey) and a handful of Los Angelinos crisscross past credulity but for the convenience of showing our interrelatedness.
Spacey is mesmerizing as the "compassion fatigued" Carter. The pain and anger of his character are palpable, as is his heart-wrenching frustration.
It's another Los Angeles movie that is alternately self-congratulatory and self-pitying...
Hollywood movies don't get much more self-regarding than this.
Some of the humor is delicious. And there are a few fine moments of truth and pathos, most of them addressing a subset of grief often ignored on film.
Ultimately too cautious for even a Valley of the Dolls insider expose. It lambasts these walking movie biz clichés, but everyone's gotta get a happy-enough ending.
A mildly engaging ensemble drama with decent performances, but it suffers from an overstuffed, contrived and often tedious plot that fails to pack any palpable, emotional punches.
A strong script from writer Thomas Moffett and stellar work from Spacey are what really make this movie work.
I felt it felt forced from the first moment into the last moment.
It's an impressively convoluted piece of writing, but it loses it shine when it becomes clear that neither Moffett nor Pate know where they are going with these stories
It's ironic that the movie is called Shrink, because it practically shrinks before your eyes.
Shrink reminds us why Kevin Spacey matters.
The characters in Thomas Moffett's script are intriguing enough, and director Jonas Pate gets sufficiently lively work from his eclectic cast, that you end up caring about them anyway.
Top CriticSpacey gives his best performance since Swimming With Sharks, and Palmer, the young star of Akeelah and the Bee, has matured into an actress of depth and nuance.
Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward, and when those sparks emanate from a doobie clutched by Kevin Spacey, a smug critique of the American dream is sure to follow.
The characters are so flatly conceived and their dilemmas so familiar that you wonder if the filmmakers even aspired to be original. Luckily, Kevin Spacey plays Carter with scene-saving grace.
As all of Shrink's seemingly disparate stories begin to fall too cleverly into each other, it's easy to be distracted by some fine performances.
...ultimately less successful as a fully-realized drama than as a showcase for its myriad of talented actors.
Jonas Pate's derivative L.A. indie brings few fresh revelations, but it does offer this insight: There is no more juice left in the strangers-connected-by-coincidence story line.
More than anything else, this confused, disappointing melodrama suggests it's time to call a moratorium on movies dealing with Hollywood, L.A. as a sprawling but interconnected milieu, and above all shrinks who are more troubled than their patients.
August 26, 2009:
Trailer & Poster review 
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