'What Just Happened' talent-laden but inert
Top-notch talent both behind and in front of the camera can't save "What Just Happened," a surprisingly inert dark comedy about two weeks in the life of a Hollywood producer.
The film is based on a memoir written by veteran movie producer Art Linson, who also wrote the screenplay. Oscar-winner Barry Levinson ("Rain Man") directed. Instead of the caustic inside look at the movie business you might expect from such credentials, "What Just Happened" settles for painting Hollywood in the broadest, safest, most familiar strokes.
Robert De Niro plays Ben, a producer who is one bomb away from being finished in the movie biz. He has little faith in his two current projects: a drama called "Fiercely" that repelled audiences in its test screening, and an action flick starring Bruce Willis, which would normally be a sure-fire hit, except that Willis arrived at the set with a prominent gut and a Grizzly Adams beard. (Willis plays himself in the movie, and has a great time sending up his A-list image.)
Ben's personal life is no better than his professional one. He struggles to have more than a casual relationship with his three children, and to reconnect with Kelly, his second ex-wife (Robin Wright Penn), who seems just as eager to spend her life apart from him.
For two weeks, the humiliations pile up. Tough studio chief Lou (Catherine Keener) tells Ben that if the pretentious, drug-addled director of "Fiercely" doesn't change his film's ending, she'll pull it from the Cannes Film Festival. Another studio chief tells Ben that if Willis doesn't shave his beard and look like a real leading man again, he'll shut down the picture and sue Ben for false representation. Kelly, meanwhile, might be sleeping with Ben's screenwriter friend, Scott (Stanley Tucci).
With his life spinning ever closer to disaster, Ben desperately tries to hang on to his career, his family and his own sanity.
De Niro gives a refreshingly low-key comic performance as Ben, abandoning the bombast that has marred his recent roles. And the strong supporting cast yields some great work, a standout being Michael Wincott's hilarious turn as the clueless director of "Fiercely."
The problem is that "What Just Happened" doesn't spend enough time with any of its storylines to give them dramatic weight, and the jabs it throws at the movie business are pretty weak. Is anyone really going to be surprised to see that Hollywood professionals are a bunch of predatory egomaniacs with shaky moral compasses?
Levinson and Linson should have sharpened their claws a bit before starting this project. The movie business is a ripe target for satire, but in this age of "Entourage," YouTube and tmz.com, digging deep is the only way to get a hit.
"What Just Happened"
Rating: 2 stars
Starring: Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis, Kristen Stewart, Stanley Tucci
Directed by: Barry Levinson
Other: A Magnolia Pictures release. Rated R (violence, sexual situations, language, drug use). 107 minutes.