Here’s when you know you’re in for trouble: you watch half of a movie somewhat drunk and then pass out. Then, you wake up the next morning and try to comprehend what you know so far about the movie and in realizing that you can’t remember shit, you watch it again, blaming the alcohol for your forgetfulness and confusion. In watching the movie again you realize that your sobriety didn’t help you understand anything better. Now, that’s never a good sign, but that’s what I just experienced with the movie Shrink, which putzed around with so much bullshit clutter and wasteful, meaningless side-plot it was difficult to tell from scene to scene whether or not it needed to be in the movie. There’s a reason that deleted scenes are part of the special features on a DVD. These guys just missed that and said “fuck your features…we’re puttin’ these in the film, suckers!” Assholes.
In Shrink, Kevin Spacey plays as Henry, a psychiatrist to the stars that is struggling to deal with the recent loss of his wife, so much so that he allegedly sucks at helping his own clients (movie said that, I wasn’t convinced), and has become the kind of pothead that usually fits the cliché of “Psych major from California that inspired the show Dr. Katz.” Whodathunk it? Neglecting appearance and tact, Henry just drudges on day by day until, like those fun compilation films before it, the stories of his clients start to converge and make everything all happy and grand again. Pahhhh! Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, threw it away.
This movie didn’t even seem like it wanted to go in the direction it went in at the end until the producers realized “ah fuck, we sort of can’t wrap this together any practical way so let’s go all Magnolia on this bitch and pretend there’s only 6 people that exist in the world that just finally met each other…” Granted, the way everything ended was very sweet and charming, but it just seemed a bit too easy all of a sudden. Remember how I said in the last review that it’s just no fun to snap your fingers and abandon your character completely? Yeah, that kinda just happened.
On top of a lackluster story that just drudged along mindlessly, everything else in it was incredibly bland. I think the filmmakers thought this movie was funny…I didn’t laugh once during the whole thing. I just sat there in silence, not moving except to remind myself that if I don’t swallow soon I’m going to start drooling like the movie was. Taken patient by patient, there was some promise and good moments but altogether it was just sloppy and there wasn’t enough reason to like any character or their situation.
And the claim that geeked me out in the first place: “Best performance since Swimming with Sharks?” My ass. These guys just haven’t seen any of his other movies. Even pot-head Spacey was boring, which sucks because I really admired the guy but this…this was just a bit sad.
Overall unimpressed to a serious degree, I give Shrink 6 dustbusters out of 10 ‘cause it just didn’t seem like it tried hard enough on any front. The character development was there…they didn’t do anything with it, but it was there. The story had some promise…they didn’t do anything with that either, but it was there. The movie initially caught my interest…and they didn’t anything with that either. I was just kinda there. Not recommended at all, this was a bit of a waste of time.
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