Shrink (Tuesday, November 17, 2009) (163)

There might be nothing that Hollywood likes better than a movie about Hollywood. The self-obsessed, inside-the-bubble culture of Southern California is shown on the big screen so outsiders can sit in wonderment at the magnificence of the views from the pools of the Hills and insiders can say, 'Oh, yeah - that's true - my [fill in the specialist] also works with [such and such star]. I do see celebrities all the time - I'm just like them.'

This movie, Shrink, represents the worst of all of these terrible cliches. There is a shrink who is so busy dealing with his own neuroses that he's having trouble helping his patients; there is a drug dealer who is much wiser than all of the educated people around him; there is an OCD super-agent who is a prick but looks after his drug-addict client; there's a black high school girl who loves old movies and lives under a bridge (I'm not kidding, she lives under a bridge); a young screenwriter who has terrible writer's block; a super-star couple whose marriage is falling apart.

But the plot is not just cliche - it actually has so many moving parts that it's rather hard to follow. Kevin Spacey is the therapist to the stars who wrote a self-help book after his wife committed suicide. He's deeply depressed himself and not dealing well with life. He has a parade of odd-ball Hollywood types as patients. Unusually, all of their lives overlap in one way or another outside of the doctor's office. The movie seems to be about the shrink's redemption and how by helping his patients they help him get better.

I really don't like Spacey because I feel like he always has to be the biggest person on screen when he is on. Small and subtle characters always have to be big and loud. I feel like he should have a sign around his neck saying "LOOK - I'M ACTING!!". I hate that crap. In addition to Spacey, there are also clumsy cameos by Robin Williams (who has a terrible, terrible New Yorkish accent), Saffron Burrows and Gore Vidal. Dallas Roberts is ridiculous and laughable in his role as the jerky agent who needs his coffee served in a porcelain mug with latex gloves.

But, ugh!, the story is so stupidly complicated that I lost track of the direction and lost interest. It felt like Altman's Short Cuts but with a more choppy story and less interesting characters. There is one inside-baseball joke about the now-defunct Orion Pictures that is not at all worth the price of admission (and, again, nice joke for the self-loving Hollywood jerks who would watch the film. That one will play great in Kansas!).

I felt the whole time that this film never would have been made if the subject matter was not entirely masturbatory for the producers and actors involved in it. Why couldn't we have had a movie about a shrink in, say, Oklahoma? Well, I guess the answer is that it would have been rather boring. Sadly, the makers of this film didn't realize that a shrink in LA is equally dull and uncreative.

Stars: .5 of 4