What happens when people we count on to hold us together are barely holding it together themselves? That’s the question Jonas Pate asks in his exposure of "the other Hollywood", where Kevin Spacey’s drugged-out shrink has an A-list clientele in an even worse state than himself.
They include Robin Williams’s star, whose sex addiction is a mask for alcoholism, a leading actress who is getting a bit long in the tooth and knows it (Saffron Burrows), an obsessive compulsive super-agent who won’t let anyone touch him (Dallas Roberts) and a young writer (Mark Webber) so insecure that he can hardly put pen to paper without vomiting.
Finally, the shrink’s psychiatrist dad (an ancient Robert Loggia) makes him take on Keke Palmer’s young movie freak whose personal problems no one has been able to solve. The film, expertly played by actors who look as if they know exactly what they are talking about, is a bit like a voyeur’s view of the Hollywood we only hear about in scandal sheets. It seems very like the truth even if its ludicrously feelgood ending certainly does not.
Gore Vidal is in there too, providing a cameo that blitzes the eye as long as it lasts. But it’s Spacey’s film — he blearily commands the screen from start to finish.
Shrink
Cert: 15
