What Just Happened?

Directed by Academy Award winner Barry Levinson
 
STARRING: Robert De Niro, Sean Penn, Catherine Keener, John Turturro, Robin Wright Penn, Stanley Tucci, Kristen Stewart, Michael Wincott and Bruce Willis
 
Produced, written and based on the memoirs of Art Linson
 
RELEASED: 28 November 2008
 
CERTIFICATE: 15a / 15
R/T: 102 MINUTES

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovc0UZ4vPHM

What Just Happened? is a movie about two weeks in the life of Ben (De Niro) as his life unravels. Ben is one the thirty most powerful producers in Hollywood, but the test screenings for his latest movie are not going well, the star of his new movie does not look like a star, his daughter from his first marriage is going through some very personal problems, and a friend of his may or may not be going out with his most recent wife. Not a good fortnight by anyone’s standards.
    The movie starts off with Ben narating a Vanity Fair photoshoot which leads into one of those “it all started when…” sequences. Ben is at a test screening of his latest flick which stars Sean Penn. The movie has quite an abrassive ending and as a result Ben and director Jeremy Brunell (played by Michael Wincott doing a Keith Ricards impersonation) are in the dog house with the studio bosses.
    The next day Ben visits Kelly(Wright-Penn), from whom he is separated and has two young children with. Kelly was the one who suggested the separation but as they talk, Ben begins to use his professional ablility to persuade to place a seed of doubt in her mind.
     From Kelly’s house he goes to another ex-wife’s house to drop Zoe, his daughter, to school. Ben notices that Zoe’s eyes are bloodshot but doesn’t pry too hard about it.
    From Zoe’s school, Ben must go to the set of his new movie where his leading man(Bruce Willis) has turned up looking very unleadingmanish. It’s Ben’s job to whip Brucie into shape.
    These stories of celebrity and everyday life then go on to play themselves out in a fairly amusing fashion. Think somewhere between Larry Sanders and Larry David but not as funny.
    De Niro is in every scene so it is up to him to carry this movie. He has done the comedic thing to great effect in the past in The King of Comedy and Meet the Parents. He has also ballsed it up in Meet the Fockers and Analyze That. Here the bespectacled Bobby does a good job without excelling. The problem is that he is too cool for the role. He remains calm when his world is falling apart. He even gets a bit gangster a one stage and this jarrs with the character created by the rest of the film.
    Stylistically I was impressed. There are little sped up vignets which add a bit of funkiness. Also there are some visual throwbacks interspersed through the picture.
    The problem with What Just Happened? though is that it appears to have been written during the writers strike. It is missing a cognitative ending. Only two of the five or six main story lines reach satisfactory conclusions, others just fizzle out and others don’t even really end. All of the endings are muddled up and done in the wrong sequence. Ultimately it more winds down than ends. Maybe the point is that you walk out of the theatre saying “What just happened? Where’s the ending”.
    It’s a frustrating end to a pretty entertaining ball of yarns. Worth seeing but not essential viewing.