What Just Happened

source: What Just Happened

I loved this film in spite of the vituperative comments on this web site to the contrary. It was a thoroughly enjoyable couple of hours about the emptiness and morbid hollowness of life in Hollywood. The man American men of substance all aspire to be - the great American film producer - is portrayed as a helpless everyman tossed asunder by the waves of an unforgiving storm that is what the rest of us call life. Because he has all of the advantages of wealth and glamour you might think that life would be just a bowl of cherries. But it's the same miserable existential mess that we all live while we attempt to deny the vanity of all that we do. Art Linson, a terrific producer, has put together a great screen play. Don't be put off by the hipper than thou naysayers. This is a very cool film with excellent performances. Run don't walk to see it. It's really a lot of fun to watch the misery of sheer success. We can all identify if we give ourselves the chance.

Quite a few users of this site voted this mess a "10" -- but excuse me if I wonder whether this was legitimate voting or voter fraud a la Barak Obama and his ACORN group. Hollywood has been "fixing" reviews for decades, why not assume they abuse the IMDb site, which is easy enough to accomplish. The best part of the movie is the actress who played deNero's ex-wife. The second best is watching Sean Penn getting pelted with several shots of ammunition in the context of the film-within-a-film. Sorry about the dog being shot, but he's only a canine actor and doesn't really die. What this film about Hollywood confirms is that filmmakers are pretty much without character, moral compass, traditional values, patriotism, common sense, or anything else good. deNero's great failure is his inability to stay off his cell phone for 10 seconds -- even at the cost of his wife and daughter. Self-control is so, so hard. Dear me! Interesting that there's only one drug abuser in the movie and he doesn't use the cocaine that flows so freely among the Hollywood elite. His drug of choice is Placydyl, a dangerous Rx drug rarely prescribed which does not give a person a "high" as implied in the film but can cause severe nerve damage and/or knock a person out. There was a time -- long long ago -- when Barry Levinson made a halfway decent movie titled DINER. Can that be a generation ago? Where has his talent gone? Or did he ever have talent to begin with? There are a handful of laughs in What Just Happened, but that doesn't make it a $10 movie.

What Just Happened (2008) ** (out of 4) Disappointing adaptation of Art Linson's book about a major Hollywood producer (Robert DeNiro) who finds his world both personally and professionally falling apart in the matter of one week. His latest finished film has the director butting heads with the studio over the ending and his upcoming picture is on the rocks because its star Bruce Willis wants to have a beard. The producer then finds out that his ex-wife (Robin Wright Penn) might be having an affair with his screenwriter (Stanley Tucci). You know, if you're going to make a satire about Hollywood then it might be a good idea to put in some humor. If you're going to make a hard edged film about Hollywood then it might be a good idea to put in some edge. This film comes off as a major disappointment considering the source material, the director and the all-star cast they lined up to do the film. Not only do we get DeNiro turning in a very good performance but we get a fun cameo by Sean Penn as well as nice supporting work by Tucci, Penn and John Turturro. The main reason for folks to see this picture would be for the performance by DeNiro who after years of so-so work actually manages to pull off a pretty good comeback. It's just a shame to see it wasted in such a bland movie. I think every bit of the blame has to be thrown at Levinson and the screenplay. It's clear the director and writer had something to say about Hollywood but they rarely ever say anything. I was really shocked at how few laughs the movie had and it wasn't because they went for them and missed but instead they simply didn't go for them. We really don't get any major incites into Hollywood that we haven't seen before and the movie never really takes any punches either. There's the whole subplot about a director having his vision taken away by the studio yet the movie isn't critical of the studio. This movie really isn't critical about anything so in the end you have to wonder what the whole point was to begin with.

This must have started out as an elegant joke about a sophisticated asylum called the Los Angeles movie studio system. Instead it turned out a monumental flop that reinforces the image of an overweight suburb of Jerusalem that lives in a golden bubble. Only a roomful of accountants could imagine this picture to be a biting satire. DeNiro plays an utterly unsympathetic bead-counter devoid of vision who disobeys every rule of scriptwriting ever written: he is not heroic, he does not learn anything during the story-arc, he encounters no genuine obstacles, and his interest in women is 100% prurient. I suppose the idea was that he would be dead-pan: instead he's just dead, only he won't roll over. Above all, like the Queen of England, he never says anything interesting from beginning to end. It's enough to make you throw your shoe through the screen. Avoid at all costs.

This was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Tedious, predictable, poorly written, poorly directed. It came off as one of those films where the producer rounds up some very big names for actors and tries to make big box office with a really lousy script. For the life of me I cannot understand how any of the folks posting positive comments could possibly have seen anything that could possibly have been anything other than wretched. ...and I love all types of films,and am well educated and experienced in viewing film with a very broad and open mind. The acting was fine (How can you go wrong with DeNiro?), but lost in the slow, plodding pace. Worse still, everything that the film makers seemed to be trying to say about Hollywood had already been done -- and much more effectively -- in The Player and Get Shorty.

Misgivings aside, it has to be said: What Just Happened is Robert De Niro's glorious return to form. Though his performance isn't particularly classic, it's the back-to-basics effortless brilliance of Bobby that we've been recently starved of. The role of producer Ben is perfect for him, mixing hot-headed comedy with grouchy but nonetheless heart-warming sentimentality. The film itself, however, is not quite as worthy a comeback we would have expected, but still garners some witty laughs and a realistically melancholy view of the bittersweet world of Hollywood. The opening scene is playfully familiar to cinema, particularly the eponymous taboo that horrifies the audience. It's a great scene, mainly because of De Niro's deadpan but wise monologue, which is the first thing to certify this as his return to form. But despite an effective beginning, the rest of the movie seems scattershot; the narrative tries to skim its way through all the familiar faces of film making (director, studio exec, agent, screenwriter, pompous actor, etc.), while simultaneously trying to prominently develop the long-existing love-hate between Ben and his wife (an acceptable but grounded Robin Wright Penn). Turtorro and Wincott's performances are actually quite hilarious (each idiosyncratic moan delivered at perfect and rib-tickling time by Turtorro, and the outburst and subsequent fall from grace of Keith Richard-esquire Wincott is brilliant). Even De Niro suffers sometimes; some of the foul-mouthed wit sounds odd and outlandish in the mouth of his reasonably straight-laced character, so some of the gags are lost, but this is more the fault of ill-conceived writing. The Bruce Willis subplot loses interest after Willis' only amusing scene; his enraged breakdown after being told to shave his beard, which, in itself, is helped by Ben's sarcastic but regretful outburst. There are some touching scenes that show Ben's tendency as a reactionary: the chair in his ex-wife's house, and his increasing annoyance at Willis, particularly his comments at a funeral. The film works best on the good sportsmanship of the cast and their willingness to laugh at themselves, which, as the film tellingly shows, is universal in the cutthroat world of Hollywood.

I am amazed that anyone can rate this film above a 4/10, this along with several other films brimming with great actors (i.e. Tropic Thunder) is let down by unlikeable characters and generically boring storyline. I think there was perhaps one, maybe (and I mean maybe as my mind was so numb by the end of the film) two moments that were actually funny. For this film to be put in the comedy genre is a crime in itself, that said Disaster Movie, Meet the Spartans and Drillbit Taylor are also billed as comedies which aren't even remotely funny. I won't go too much into detail about the storyline, other than to say its fairly meaningless, not one of the characters evokes emotion from them and De Niro's character didn't make me feel sorry for him at all, which the film tried to do. The acting isn't bad, the actors aren't bad, just the whole film is poor. I feel De Niro in his ageing years like Morgan Freeman has sold out to a number of below par movies just for the money. This film does not deserve to be graced with such talent and I can only hope De Niro and Willis are truly sorry for their participation in such an atrocity. I've seen better B movies.

Gee, it was painful to watch. Constructed as a Hollywood satire in the vein of Altman's The Player, the whole thing is just a huge misfire. Boring unoriginal script, totally devoid of any interesting ideas, mundane and pedestrian performances from the A-list actors. There was absolutely nothing to keep me interested. The only moment that could get you chuckle was when Turturro character gets a shovel in his balls and falls into the grave. The problem with with that though, that it was in the last 20 minutes, so you may just fast forward to that. Otherwise, it's really that bad. Total waste of time and money. Was the crew on drugs, or something?

I just saw this at an AFI screening and was really disappointed. Maybe Linson's book was good, but it did not translate well to film. There were a few laugh out loud moments, but they were few and far between. Frankly, I was bored after 20 minutes. I didn't care for the protagonist -- nor anyone else. Therefore, I had no emotional connection. And I don't think the audience did either, although they politely applauded at the end -- perhaps because De Niro, Levinson and Linson were there for a Q@A after the screening. There have been very few good films about Hollywood. Altman's The Player was one. It was cohesive, with a solid story and structure. This one was a mess. Despite it's stellar cast, I don't see it doing well with the general public. With that said, I'm sure it will do well in and around Hollywood.

When I read some of the other users' comments I could hardly believe we watched the same movie. Wasted 2 hrs of my life!? This is, simply put, ridiculous, this movie does not require moral or surprise, it is quite enjoyable and powerful as it is. Superb acting, intelligent writing, characters you can sympathize with as well as good steady rhythm. It is a beautiful movie centered around a producer and how his life evolves around a series of regular down to earth events. It is a little like entourage minus the girls and absurdity as it is centered around Hollywood but you do sympathize with the lead character a lot on his reactions to events. I had no expectations from this movie and it turned out to be quite a gem, I believe this is one of those movies that will be rated more highly in the future. If there was any hype around this, if people expected a blockbuster, well it is their fault. It is more like an independent movie and a very good one at that I must add. It certainly feels like De Niro very much enjoyed acting in this one, this is by far the best I have seen him in years. Turturro, Wincott, Penn Willis all saw something in this script and they were right. ( To be honest with you Turturro did overdo his part a little) I have been to much more boring movies than this and they were rated much higher by IMDb crowd, no it does not move at a snail's pace, no there are no big psychological dramas or a big story, and yet all those are OK and their absence is what makes this movie perfect.