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WHAT JUST HAPPENED?

Indeed

By DAVID WILDMAN

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If ever there was an indicator that the age of irony is over, this is Exhibit A. A title like What Just Happened? invites only trouble. It's like naming your film Fiasco. Unless the thing is staggeringly brilliant, it's just begging for abuse. To answer the question that this film so self-mockingly and self-consciously imposes on itself: I don't know what just happened, but whatever it was, the words interesting or inspired certainly don't describe it.

This is an unfortunate outcome, considering the quality of the cast at hand here. How can you go wrong with Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis, John Turturro and Sean Penn? And what about director Barry Levinson? Didn't he do a great job with Wag The Dog? Yes, but that was 1997. Remember a film called Envy in 2004? I'll never forget it—for swag, they sent me a calendar featuring pictures of dog poop. I'm not even kidding you.

The closer you look at What Just Happened?, the more it crumbles before your eyes. If it's an attempt to duplicate The Player, it is missing a little thing called plot. Robert Altman's bruising masterpiece was a direct shot at the casual amorality that makes the film industry go round, and it focused on a producer involved in a murder. In What Just Happened?, the motivating events this producer/protagonist, Ben (De Niro), must deal with include Willis (playing himself) holding a production hostage because he won't shave his beard and a director (Michael Wincott) who won't recut an ending to an awful Sean Penn film. Plus, Penn's ex-wife (Robin Wright Penn) is apparently diddling a writer friend of his (Stanley Tucci), who's got more than a few offspring scattered around LA. If that sounds like a meager excuse for a feature film, it most certainly is.

The film is based on an eponymous book subtitled: Bitter Hollywood Tales from the Front Line, written by Art Linson. Linson was an industry mogul with his name attached to over 30 releases including the highly successful Fight Club, hideous flops like The Black Dahlia, and the overlooked gem Into The Wild. Add to that list a recent piece of dubious garbage titled What Just Happened?—that's right: He's one of the producers as well as the guy responsible for this trainwreck of a screenplay. Being such a smart, canny producer, he should have fired the writer.

Also, someone should tell Linson that just because a dude hobnobs with big stars does not make his life interesting. De Niro does his level best, but his character is so ill-defined that it's hard to decide if the guy is a jerk, a victim of his own success and somewhat-ruthless ambition, or just plain boring. What's more, it's even harder to give a shit.

The fatal failure of What Just Happened? is that it has no balls. Linson is a pretend pugilist who plays at taking on the vapid lifestyles of the rich and famous, yet when push comes to shove, he has no stomach for the fight. It's as if he realizes in the end how pointless it is taking punches at a mirror.