Shrink

Stories about Tinseltown are not exactly few and far between and I suspect that this fair but unremarkable instance did not get a theatrical release was because of the poor theatrical performance of the better, but not much more so, of  Barry Levinson's What Just Happened (2008) to which this film bears resemblance insofar at they both deal with the high-flying, drug-taking, expletive-ridden world of Hollywood movie making.

Here Kevin Spacey plays Henry Carter, an A-list Los Angeles psychiatrist to the stars whose wife has committed suicide and who spends most of his time smoking dope and grieving. Director Jonas Pate and his writer, Thomas Moffett, try hard to be edgy and smart but its all a bit too try-hard and they fail to give the film the strong characters it needs to stand out (another and more successful point of comparison in this respect might be The Wackness, 2008) .

Another problem is the casting. Whereas What Just Happened traded heavily on its star cast, here only Spacey is top shelf (an unbilled Robin Williams appears briefly and cops an amusing put-down via his character). Whilst Spacey is well-suited to the central role, with the exception of Keke Palmer, who plays Jemma, the rest of the cast are only going through their lines with more or less effectiveness. Shrink is passable entertainment but as Levinson showed us, satirizing yourself isn't easy.

DVD Extras: Interviews with Jonas Pate and Braxton Pope; English Captions for the hearing-impaired; Audio description for the vision-impaired

Available from: Village Roadshow

 

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