What Just Happened (2008)

just watch it!

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The joke with What Just Happened is that its a mainstream film with big stars and they want to pass it off as an independent film. This is a satirical look at the chaos of Hollywood and film making based on the memoirs of film producer Art Linson and directed by Barry Levinson.Robert De Niro is the frazzled producer balancing his precarious personal and professional lives. He has to deal with a prima donna Bruce Willis who refuses to shave off his beard and a highly strung British director who wants an uncompromising ending to a Sean Penn film where a dog meets a nasty fate much to the chagrin of the film studio boss.Its fun poke at Hollywood filled with star turns who are in on the joke and seem to enjoy themselves especially Willis and Penn. I liked Catherine Keener as he studio head who has given an ultimatum to De Niro to fix the film ending and Michael Wincott as the sly director.However we have seen this before and also its been more funnier, bitter and cynical in films such as The Player, The Big Knife, The Big Picture or Sunset Boulevard. Levinson and De Niro wielded a sharper knife when they made Wag the Dog but their effort is more hollow here.

This is one of those movies that you try to watch all of the way through because you paid good money to rent it.Sadly, this is the first movie I ever returned without watching all of it because it was worse than awful. The acting is wooden, the plot is beyond stupid and the whole thing makes me want to sue the studio to get my two hours back.I generally like DeNiro and even liked many of Willis's movies but all I can say is they must be desperate to appear in a morbid piece of trash like this.The movie starts off as a screening for some sort of mystery and after the scene with the dog, the screening reviewers generally pan it as a piece of garbage. Unfortunately, the real movie doesn't get any better.The interaction between DeNiro and his ex isn't even a good divorce movie. All this movie accomplishes is makes me see how really inept Hollywood is in producing something that would make a decent drama or even comedy.Save your money, spend it on a hamburger or something, you will get more out of it.

"What Just Happened" tells the story of a fading Hollywood producer... and that's all. Nothing extraordinary happens to him throughout the course of the film. He squabbles with his ex-wife, argues with stubborn actors and nurtures frustrated directors while trying to please the studio head... pretty much what every producer has done since the dawn of the film industry. I kept waiting for the moment that his life would spin into new, unexpected territory to justify the film but it never happened.Robert DeNiro is great in the lead- completely believable as a passionate man whose job is to mute himself in order to serve everyone else's passions. (Is it me or does he look much better with the goatee these days?) The movie is based on real-life producer Art Linson's book which is chock-full of anecdotes and true stories of absurdity from the world of film-making. I'm guessing the book plays much better than the movie.The movie, in fact, plays more like a pilot for a television series since it sets up a sympathetic lead character and all his supporting cast: his estranged daughter, his dullard assistant, his drama queen director, unshakable studio exec... and yet we get no real payoff for any of the plot lines: Where does DeNiro call his daughter a slut? Where does he punch out the director for changing the ending to his film? Where does he sabotage his friend's screenplay for sleeping with his ex-wife?Not here. This is just an average week in the life of a Hollywood power-broker, and a rather unremarkable one at that. What a waste...GRADE: C

I had good expectations before watching What Just Happened because Robert De Niro had previously worked with director Barry Levinson in Wag the Dog, one of my favorite political comedies, and I was enthusiastic to see them working together again in a satire of the film industry. Unfortunately, What Just Happened is too bland and artificial to consider it as a genuine denounce against Hollywood, and I think that it is nothing more than an insipid comedy whose good intentions are not enough for justifying its lack of energy or its boring screenplay.It is easy to laugh at Hollywood, because from the outside, it seems like an absurd industry which punishes the originality at the same time it promotes the mediocrity and the conformism. However, I would have thought that screenwriter Art Linson (who also wrote the book this movie is based on) would have had more things to say about Hollywood, since he has been working for various decades as a powerful producer with various mainstream films (such as, for example, Fight Club, Heat and The Untouchables) in his filmography. And I think that is the main problem from What Just Happened: it does not even remotely go as far as it should, and it simply recycles the same jokes and situations we have seen in much better satires of the film industry, from the movie The Player to TV series like Entourage and Extras.Among the few positive things I can say about this movie, I have to mention the solid performances, from Stanley Tucci as a capricious screenwriter to Michael Wincott as a director/artist obsessed with his vision, without forgetting about Catherine Keener as an inflexible director from a studio and John Turturro as a traitor agent who is only worried in charging his next commission. But the best performance of What Just Happened comes from De Niro, who can credibly express the tumult of emotions his character must keep under control in order not to ruin his career or his personal life. However, despite the competent performances, I do not feel that What Just Happened deserves even a slight recommendation, because I found it to be a boring and unfunny satire which lacks of ambition.