Hollywood could use a little therapy. An overabundance of money, free time, youthful good looks, alcohol, and drugs has led to a horde of issues for the young and the young at heart who make their home in Los Angeles. A stark look at the insider nature of Hollywood, the light and the dark, Shrink takes on a multitude of questions, but does it fulfill the promise of its cast, or are we left to wade through yet another mishandled Hollywood dissection?

Shrink finds Kevin Spacey at his ultimate level of apathy, playing that droll pathetic character we've come to know and sigh with all too well. He plays a depressed and manic professional psychiatrist with a host of clients, and we become enmeshed in the lives of those he sees even as his own life falls even further into chaos. Saffron Burrows plays a washed-up actress, Robin Williams appears creepy as an aging star, and the real star of the film, Dallas Roberts, plays an obsessive-compulsive agent; they all make appearances as clients on the brink of losing it in one way or another. The film meanders through Los Angeles in the vein of Short Cuts or Magnolia, following the lives of several characters as they attempt to deal with suicide, depression, moral bankruptcy, and the difficulties of love. As these seemingly disparate lives intersect, what will become of these people who are so empty and broken?

Often the film is pointlessly dark, as if the writer was hell-bent on creating something infused with meaning. Real art comes not from endless effort directed at an end, but rather through highlighting the beauty or truth of what already exists in the world around us. A major highlight of this film is how almost-right it gets Hollywood, from the neurotic agents to the drunk actors, the sadly abused assistants and starving screenwriters to the fake interactions. Shrink is clearly written by either someone entrenched in the day-to-day operations of the industry, or someone with a remarkable imagination. Yet this isn't the real Hollywood, in the same way that The West Wing was unlike the real Washington D.C. and ER fails to capture the truth of an emergency room. Shrink is trying so very hard, and portrays a very thin sliver of the Los Angeles pie, a piece that most residents strive to engage or ignore. While many films strive to find redemption or at least a reasonable conclusion, all of the attempts at closure in Shrink feel depressingly exhaustive, a final clawing at a semblance of truth and restructuring. The message seems to be "When we think we are left with nothing, what are we left with?" And the pat answer to that question is "each other" -- though there is no joy in this discovery, only resignation. Where this answer comes as jubilant or merciful in other films, this comprehension that in the city love creates family out of strangers, Shrink is unable to make this feel like a discovery; it's more like sinking into quicksand.

While the film is entertaining at times and merely pretty to look at other times, very little draws the viewer in and excites or inflames the senses. It's derivative, uninteresting, and ultimately bland, though it makes several feeble attempts at titillation. Even with such a promising cast, including the marvelous Keke Palmer, this story falls flat.

The deleted scenes shed no new light on the film, neither enhancing nor detracting, and I can't imagine anyone listening to the audio commentary of their own free will. A Jackson Browne music video and a series of interviews rounds out the lackluster DVD special features.

Shrink is available on September 29.

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