Hollywood shrink Dr. Henry Carter (Kevin Spacey) is a weed-smoking drunk at home since his wife's suicide. His clients are self-obsessed with various problem in the entertainment industry. His psychiatrist father (Robert Loggia) refers troubled student Jemma (Keke Palmer) to him. Jesus (Jesse Plemons) is his drug dealer.All these Hollywood stereotypes with their problems are really tiresome. The only interesting characters are Spacey and Palmer but only when they're together. They are an electric duo. Everything else is a horribly boring drag. I couldn't care less about his patients or his family or his friends or his dealer or him talking to anybody other than Palmer. So I only found this movie compelling for about fifteen minutes in total.

I just caught this quirky movie on Netflix. Yet another exploration of the ennui that surrounds celebrity status, this is a great little gem that showcases Spacey's talents well. It came very close to being great, but stopped short, I suspect because of bad decisions in direction and editing. Characters were brought in (Robin Williams being one) for side stories which never quite connected to the main plot. Pot addiction is shown as a series of untimely naps, which is not realistic. The audience never gets a glimpse into the main character's despair, or the circumstances surrounding his wife's death. A love interest is developed and then never followed through. Characters walk in and out of the story without strong reasons. The ending is trite, as if they just needed to wrap it up. Too many loose ends, and a waste of some good talent. Nonetheless, because of Spacey (and a nod to the well-developed friendship with his drug dealer, that was fun to watch) I hung in there happily right to the end.

Shrink (2009)We know the joke that is no joke at all--psychiatrists are the ones who need the help.The rest of the cast needs help, too, but Kevin Spacey is a perfectly dour, complex, troubled, and rather smart shrink. And if his performance is nuanced and powerful in an undramatic way, the large supporting cast is exceptional, too. Exceptional. There might be issues with the neat ending, or with some of the motivations here and there, but there is so much going on within this clearly deceptive world of Hollywood insiders and outsiders, almost anything goes.This is director Jonas Pate's first feature, after many t.v. episodes and some music video. That he coordinated such an involved plot, and made it look good, is impressive. That he got such an array of actors to be their idiosyncratic selves without too much strain and affectation is also impressive. It might help that I expected an ordinary film and found it extraordinary. It has an echo in many ways of "Short Cuts" and in many ways equals it, though that 1993 film had nothing but the highest expectations (Robert Altman directing, based on Raymond Carver stories). "Shrink" is refreshing in how it approaches Hollywood peripherally--not through a producer's office and some actors looking to make it, but through this psychiatrist who treats Hollywood's elite. There might be a sense, especially at first, that there is no clear direction to the plot. But that's a matter of having so many pieces, and they haven't started fitting together. I found each subplot engaging enough to lead me along quite happily right away. And so when it got more integrated, and the stakes of the characters were raised, the whole just got better and better.I'm not sure how this slipped by everyone's attention. Don't let it slip yours.

First of all I've been very aware of how critics gave this film lackluster reviews yet I beg to differ, and thankfully so do most people rating this on IMDb. It's essentially a Hollywood dramedy revolving around the couple of individual lives including Dr. Henry Carter played oh so charismatically and sharply by Kevin Spacey with many other characters such as Jeremy, an ongoing writer played by Mark Webber and Jemma: an emotionally struggling teenager girl played by the very identifiable star Keke Palmer. Be aware though, I watched this on T.V and was very close to passing this up due to it's not-so-appealing 2/4 star rating on Dish but I really felt like I needed to see this at least once due to its interesting premise and after watching it I was proud to say to myself that it exceeded beyond any short-term expectations I may have had for it at the moment. The most identifiable trait that really characterized it is that it may be just over an hour-and-a-half but it feels just over 2 hours, most people would assume that's a bad thing and would immediately go on to bash it for its slow pace, I prefer to call it STEADY pacing since the characterizations are done so right considering director Jonas Pate's very realistic and, should I say, very TRANQUIL style. You really hang on throughout this whole journey of a movie embracing what next step each of these people have to face in their lives and I couldn't help but feel satisfied by the end of the movie, which is indeed the sure plus way of knowing it was a good movie wait, change that: a fantastic movie.