Shrink

In Jonas Pate’s ungainly dramedy Shrink, Kevin Spacey tries in vain to recapture some of his Lester Burnham fire as Henry Carter, a Hollywood analyst to the stars and committed pothead. Carter is furiously self-medicating in the wake of his wife’s inexplicable suicide, but a troubled African-American teen could provide him with the opportunity to pull out of his tailspin and really help someone. It’s just too bad that no professional therapists were around to counsel the film’s schizophrenic script, provide treatment to the listless performances (Spacey and Mark Webber are the worst offenders) or sedate the gratingly self-satisfied ending. Shrink is a low-brow comedy that becomes vapid and patchy whenever it tries for profundity, and in its ensemble vision of the colliding lives of multiracial Los Angelenos, it only succeeds in making Crash seem deep.