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.
Comment
07/23/09
Shrink (2009)
26
%
Tomatometer
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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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Reviews for Shrink
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.
07/22/09
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.
07/24/09
I felt it felt forced from the first moment into the last moment.
07/27/09
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
10/06/09
It's ironic that the movie is called Shrink, because it practically shrinks before your eyes.
07/31/09
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.
08/20/09
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.
08/06/09
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.
07/24/09
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.
07/23/09
Almost everyone's miserable in Shrink--but nobody more so than a person unlucky enough to be watching it.
07/28/09
A depressing drama about a Hollywood shrink who has it all and is experiencing a crisis.
07/23/09
Director Jonas Pate and screenwriter Thomas Moffett have turned this strongly cast, potentially smart tale of personal intersection among a mostly rarefied group of Los Angelenos into an irritating and unconvincing slog.
07/24/09
It's almost farcical, and at some point, Judd Apatow is going to make one of these movies as a comedy, the way he skewered the musical biopic with Dewey Cox.
07/30/09
The script by Thomas Moffett slickly satirizes the movie industry's fascination with vampires and special effects without being especially compelling or original.
07/30/09
A tart drama that probes and exposes shadowy entrails of the glamor capital but illuminating depth is not its most therapeutic effect.
07/23/09
Never mind the crazy cast; this weary retread of trendy multicharacter melodramas is what’s really unhinged.
07/23/09
There really was a much better comedy here than melodrama.
07/31/09
Top CriticDirected by Jonas Pate and written with a nice ear for self-delusion by Thomas Moffet, Shrink mixes cliches with some pleasant surprises.
07/31/09
Shrink starts promisingly, but Jonas Pate directs his fine cast straight into a swamp of schmaltz as every loose thread of plot gets patly resolved.
07/24/09
Top CriticLatest News for Shrink
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