Film review: What Just Happened

Published on Friday 21 November 2008 14:25

WHAT JUST HAPPENED? (15) Director: Barry Levinson Running time: 104 minutes ***

BARRY Levinson's What Just Happened? is based on the memoir of Art Linson, a real-life Hollywood producer of films such as The Untouchables and Fight Club, who seems to have fun recycling some of the insider stories.

One of the book's anecdotes is a long and hilarious battle to get Alec Baldwin to shave his beard for The Edge, and trying to nail down Robert De Niro for that same film. Wisely, De Niro fends off any involvement in The Edge because he balked at having to fight a bear. He did, however, suggest that the bear have sex with the photographer: "That might be interesting."

De Niro not only backed Linson's film of his book, he also plays the film's long-suffering hero, Ben, a film producer in a script where names have been changed to protect the guilty. For instance, one of Ben's crises now involves Bruce Willis (playing a volatile version of himself) who has grown a beard that would make Karl Marx swoon with jealousy.

He also has to placate a temperamental director (Michael Wincott), a combination of David Fincher, an English accent and a pirate. The picture they made together, a pretentious drama titled Fiercely, does not have the sweet smell of money. For a start it stars Sean Penn, and for a second thing it ends with the death of a dog. The test audience, understandably, rebels. "They killed the dog," they mutter in shock. No one seems to be too concerned that Penn also dies on screen.

Ben's personal life is not better. He has two ex-wives who have taken most of his money. One of them, played by Robin Wright Penn, still holds his interest but has been sleeping with a screenwriter named Scott (Stanley Tucci). When Ben confronts him over the fact that he's married, he retorts: "What difference does that make? I'm not happy."

In What Just Happened? nobody seems happy – and very little happens. Some set-ups are very promising, such as the scene at an agent's funeral, where mourning gives way to settling scores and petty rivalries among the mourners. But both The Player and current TV series Entourage do a better job of mocking the absurdities of the film business. What Just Happened? is less courageous about placing its digs.

The film has a lot of pops at actors and middle management – but no one with real power gets clipped. Without studio bosses – the people who greenlight Eddie Murphy movies and endless gross-out comedies where teenage boys spend their vacation trying to have sex with cosmetically enhanced women – this is just a low-grade version of The Office with Hollywood folk, an Extras without that show's confidence.

Nor does the film admit to the industry's notably salacious underbelly. Ben eventually takes advantage of an actress – but only after she corners him in the men's room and insists she'd like to sleep with him. Contrast this with the producer Julia Phillips, who once revealed that Warren Beatty propositioned her and her 12-year-old daughter for a threesome. Phillips apparently replied: "Warren, we're both too mature for you."

What Just Happened? is easy to watch but also easy to forget, apart from De Niro who works hard to make Ben warmly human. In revealing the weakness of a man who lives by the exercise of power, he makes eloquent use of his character's silences, guarded expressions, pauses and evasions. It's also fun to see Willis bullying De Niro. You know he knows he can only get away with it while De Niro is in character.

On general release from Friday