What Just Happened?

"Jaw-droppingly arcane and dripping with self-regard, Barry Levinson's tedious excuse for a Hollywood caper asks us, as if we haven't been asked a thousand times before, to pity the poor movie producer—in this case Art Linson, adapting his own memoir about trying to get good movies made in bad old Hollywood," writes Ella Taylor in the Voice. "Begging for sympathy, What Just Happened? invites only schadenfreude."

"The moments in the film that feel most truthful are the fictionalized parts, and the ones that feel most outlandish are the ones in which real actors make appearances in the fictionalized world," writes Micah Towery in Slant. "Not well crafted enough to be satisfyingly postmodern (like Adaptation. or Being John Malkovich), nor well framed enough to be a film-within-a-film (like Singing in the Rain), What Just Happened? suffers some of the same problems as Stranger Than Fiction. It uses postmodern devices to set up a story and then loses them along the way when it tries to bring the film to a satisfying conclusion."

Updated through 10/18.

"It remains to be seen whether audiences will have the time or the inclination, just now, to sympathize with the stresses that beset a Hollywood producer and his pals," notes Anthony Lane in the New Yorker. "Levinson has assembled a fine field of actors, no question, but the going is too easy for them underfoot; movies about movies are old ground, and what could be sweeter - cozier, even - than trampling on the follies of your trade, knowing that nothing will ever change?"

"Bruce Willis provides the film's best moments as a parody of himself, but De Niro's performance as an irrelevant has-been is the closest What Just Happened? comes to true industry insight," writes Benjamin H Sutton in the L Magazine.

"What Just Happened? is a doodle, but its aura of dread seems earned," finds David Edelstein in New York.

Marshall Fine interviews Levinson and De Niro.

Susan King talks with cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine and with Levinson about Stéphane Fontaine, who, the director says, has "an ability to 'have a great sense of intimacy without letting the style dominate the narrative. It is a wonderful blend.'"

Update, 10/16: "Every joke in Tropic Thunder, The Player, The Muse, I'll Do Anything, even HBO's Entourage is sharper, more incisive and funnier than those in What Just Happened?," writes Armond White in the New York Press. "Anyone who sees this movie without reading this review will repeat the title endlessly."

Updates, 10/17: "It is now routine for movie-world insiders to send up their own vanity and self-absorption by reproducing it with just enough exaggeration to make the rest of us feel like insiders too," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "It's not a bad feeling - just, at this point, a little empty and ritualistic."

"[T]he surprise is how sympathetic Ben [the producer played by De Niro] manages to be, considering what he does for a living," writes Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times. "Even more surprising, by that measure, is that the movie's second-most sympathetic character is the agent. But maybe 'sympathetic' is taking it too far. Rather, by the end, you know how he feels: queasy, clenched, weirdly exhilarated."

"[T]he picture is more self-congratulatory than it is vicious, or even illuminating, and it dawdles when it needs to crack along at a clip," finds Salon's Stephanie Zacharek.

"Unfortunately, it barely musters the cleverness to accidentally satirize itself," finds Paul Constant in the Stranger.

"Julia Phillips's famous autobiography was titled, You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again," Roger Ebert reminds us in the Chicago Sun-Times. "Barry Levinson and Art Linson will. At this point, if you're going to make a film about Hollywood greed, hypocrisy and lust, you have to be willing to burn your bridges. There's not a whole lot in What Just Happened? that would be out of place in a good SNL skit."

"[T]he script is sharp, and the ensemble cast a treat," finds Ben Walters in Time Out New York: "Stanley Tucci and John Turturro offer sleazy-neurotic support, Sean Penn and Bruce Willis send themselves up nicely, and Michael Wincott impresses as a prima donna Brit director."

"Happened deviates greatly from Linson's winning little book in its particulars, but retains its sustained melancholy mood of low-key existential dread and dyspeptic wit," finds Nathan Rabin at the AV Club - where he also talks with Levinson.

"At the end of a serious film about the movies, even a bone-dry satire like The Player, we're supposed to walk away remaining a bit mystified as to the way that world works, as if it's beyond and above both the constraints and the moral codes of 'real life,'" writes Karina Longworth at the SpoutBlog. "Old Hollywood reinforced its structuring lies by making movies which pushed the tacit understanding that us mere mortals would be out of our league if ever asked to operate under Hollywood's dark laws. What Just Happened? doesn't feel like a serious film, but that's not necessarily a reason to not recommend it. The reason to not recommend it is that it has no concept of that sense of mystery, and without it, it feels like there's nothing at stake."

Updates, 10/18: "There are two funny sequences - one involving Ben and Kelly's therapist, the other at the Cannes Film Festival - but just about everything else in What Just Happened? feels safe, familiar, toothless," writes Alonso Duralde at MSNBC.

"Not even De Niro's best comic performance in years (as a truth-impaired producer), or great turns by Turturro (as a profoundly neurotic agent) and Robin Wright Penn (as one of De Niro's exes) - or even Willis (as himself) throwing a hissy fit - can save this one," writes Lawrence Levi for Nextbook.

Posted by dwhudson at October 15, 2008 2:12 PM