SHRINK
Directed by Jonas Pate
Produced by Michael Burns, Braxton Pope & Dana Brunetti
Written by Thomas Moffett, based on a story by Henry Rearden
Released by Roadside Attractions
USA. 104 min. Rated R
With Kevin Spacey, Saffron Burrows, Keke Palmer, Dallas Roberts, Mark Webber, Pell James, Jack Huston, Laura Ramsey, Robert Loggia & Robin Williams
 

How do you make an uninspired film like Shrink seem full of life? Load it with characters. Give them problems. Maybe a grieving husband, a starving artist, an aging playboy, and a tortured youth—just to start. Whisk these archetypes together, and call whatever congeals a movie.

In the right hands, films that generate drama almost purely by creatively connecting one character to another—more flow-charting than screenwriting—can be sweeping and revelatory. Just think of Magnolia. But this middling effort by director Jonas Pate (Deceiver) again proves they are very hard to get right.

Granted, Shrink is not quite as bad as Crash, a similarly constructed feature that — shame! — won the 2005 Academy Award for best picture. Also set in Los Angeles, Shrink examines the psychic state of no fewer than eight badly damaged souls, each with a strong connection to Tinseltown. Chief among the head cases is Henry Carter (Kevin Spacey), a widely-published pop psychologist with a client roster studded with celebrities.

When we first encounter Dr. Carter—unshaven, miserable, hung-over, constantly smoking marijuana—we are meant to be incredulous: How could a psychologist ever have any problems? Contain your laughter; we later learn that an unspeakable recent tragedy sent him spiraling toward this life of abandon.

Dr. Carter is surrounded by people who are trying to help him, including Jeremy (Mark Webber), a plucky screenwriter, and Jesus (Jesse Plemons), a drug dealer whose exceptional weed keeps the glitterati twinkling. Unlike in Crash, the characters here tend less to smack into one another by chance. Either they know each other already, or they’re driven—by compassion, desire, or desperation—to meet. This gives their connections the laudable quality of appearing human.

But watch how widely this web is spun. One of Dr. Carter’s patients, Patrick (Dallas Roberts), is a hyper-neurotic Ari Gold-plated superagent, who represents an over-the-hill starlet, Kate (the shrink’s romantic interest, played wearily by Saffron Burrows). Patrick also represents Shamus (Jack Huston), a hunky Scot with a drug problem. (Shamus and the shrink have the same dealer, naturally.) Shamus is promoting a film with yet another of the shrink’s patients, Holden, a movie star and boozehound nymphomaniac inhabited quite convincingly by Robin Williams. The degrees of separation drop with each scene.

The movie ultimately turns on the friendship Dr. Carter develops with a pro bono client, Jemma (Keke Palmer, Akeelah and the Bee), an irreverent teenager from a poor family who loses herself in films to cope with her mother’s recent death. As Spacey and Palmer’s characters realize they’re burdened by the same pain, the dramatic energy between the two actors builds to an emotional paroxysm. Because these well-paired performers are dazzlingly good at what they do, there’s something like a master theater workshop buried in this Byzantine plot. However, in the end, that plot collapses quite lamely with a cloying dénouement that leaves everybody—at least everybody who’s on screen—smiling. Stephen Heyman
July, 24, 2009