Shrink Critic Reviews

Kevin Spacey brings another of his cynical, bitter characters to life -- very smart, and fresh out of hope -- but the movie doesn't give him much of anywhere to take it.Read the full review

Grief and suicide seem unlikely subjects for a comedy. But Shrink tries gamely to mine edgy humor from the darkest places. Sometimes it works. Other times, its Hollywood-centric focus feels like a re-heated cinemash of "The Wackness," "Crash" and "The Player."Read the full review

The film may be too inside-baseball, with strained sympathy and contrived emotions.Read the full review

The plot relies heavily on pat betrayal, forced coincidences - and the sort of closure that lands, with a thud, in a tidy package of cliches. Yet some of the humor is delicious.Read the full review

You do wish Pate and writer Thomas Moffett had gone for more wit given the outlandishness of the melodrama since it would be more fun to laugh at this than take it seriously.Read the full review

These characters are mostly too sketchy and their connections too contrived for Shrink to jell as an incisive ensemble piece.Read the full review

Shrink is no worse than the average Hollywood comedy. But it shows, more obviously than most, the bankruptcy of standard-issue American pop narrative, circa 2009.Read the full review

Shrink is exactly like virtually all his (Spacey) post-"American Beauty" vehicles: flashy, phony, nakedly melodramatic, and full of big actorly moments disconnected from real life.Read the full review

It wants to be "Good Will Hunting" set in the land of "Entourage," but its bummed-out touchy-feeliness is every bit as concocted as its overly jaded showbiz corruption.Read the full review