Shrink
Director: Jonas Pate
Starring: Kevin Spacey, Robin Williams, Saffron Burrows
Meet Dr Henry Carter (Kevin Spacey), a Los Angeles-based psychiatrist and the author of the best-selling self-help book Happiness Now. As a telling opening scene depicting a desolate Carter slumped on a sun lounger shows, it's clear that this man is far from happy. His misery is warranted: we soon learn that his wife has recently committed suicide. As a result, he relies on substance abuse and a heavy dose of cynicism to blur the reality of his everyday existence. His recovery isn't perhaps helped by the fact that his work sees him listening to the problems of a group of individuals living a life that many would deem privileged. We are introduced to Kate (Saffron Burrows), an actress in her mid-thirties who worries that because of her age, roles are drying up; then there are the ruthless agent who suffers from OCD (Dallas Roberts) and an ex-film star played by Robin Williams. Carter's contempt for many of their issues is thinly veiled, and intentional or otherwise, it very much reinforces the idea of Hollywood as a vacuous playground. As the film progresses, we see that the lives of the leading characters are all intertwined, albeit in a not altogether seamless fashion. There's something about the various coincidences that feels forced; Spacey is, as ever, very convincing as a despondent, malaise-ridden man, but unfortunately the supporting storylines are formulaic and they don't resonate deeply enough.
