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
How does the Tomatometer work 
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.
Runtime: 1 hr 50 mins
Genre: Comedies
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
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
Top CriticIt'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
Latest News for Shrink
August 26, 2009:
Trailer & Poster review 
More...
July 23, 2009:
Critics Consensus: Orphan Is Mixed Bag
This week at the movies, we've got an evil adoptee (Orphan, starring Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard), a battle of the sexes (The Ugly Truth, starring Katherine Heigl and... More...
What’s Hot On RT
Other News
Fresh Links
Featured
RT on YouTube
Subscribe to RT's YouTube channel and don't miss a second of our cracking video content.
RT on Twitter
Follow Rotten Tomatoes and join us as we tweet about the week's releases.
IGN RSS Feeds