Sundance. What Just Happened?

"One of the most expensive movies ever to come to Sundance played to one of the most distributor-heavy screenings ever to hit the festival on Saturday night," blog the Hollywood Reporter's Steven Zeitchik and Gregg Goldstein. "Buyers from pretty much every major company turned out for Barry Levinson's What Just Happened?, the serio-comic study of a studio producer (played by Robert De Niro) plagued by personal and professional issues over the course of one turbulent week. The movie is loosely based on producer Art Linson's memoir."

Updated.

Premiere's Glenn Kenny is "pleasantly surprised... I usually can't stand this kind of inside-baseball moviemaking, wherein showbiz figures prove what good sports they are by essaying appalling versions of themselves... But these guys - not to mention Sean Penn (another self-player [besides Bruce Willis), Catherine Keener (in a very low-key variant of the talent-disembowelling studio exec), John Turturro (as a repellent wreck of an agent) and the too-rarely-seen Michael Wincott (as a dissolute 'visionary' director) made me like it."

"De Niro is very funny as a guy trying to hold onto what little power he has, and Levinson does as good aging directors often do, letting scenes play on until he finds the right level of beautiful chaos," writes the AV Club's Noel Murray. "The biggest problem with What Just Happened is that not much actually does happen... but the movie contains a lot of funny lines, and it captures the business side of show business with an only slightly jaded eye."

Variety's Anne Thompson finds it "a delightfully amusing backstage Hollywood comedy. Think an update of The Player, maybe, or an episode of Entourage (complete with Cannes finale) on steroids."

Back in the Hollywood Reporter, Kirk Honeycutt finds that Levinson and Linson "have too much love and genuine affection for the movies and the way they get made to cut very deep. Everything here is a paper cut."

For Entertainment Weekly, Missy Schwartz talks with De Niro, Levinson, Linson, and then in comes Willis.

Update: "It's meant to be outrageous and unbelievable how art turns into pure commerce, but there have been plenty of Hollywood satires that demolish the 'test screening' mentality, the 'beleaguered producer' conceit, and the oh-so-cynical insinuation that Hollywood has no integrity whatsoever," writes Scott Weinberg at Cinematical. "So while much of the material in What Just Happened? is insightful and accurate... it's just not all that new or shocking anymore."

Posted by dwhudson at January 21, 2008 9:46 AM