Mini-Review: What Just Happened

What Just Happened
Directed by Barry Levinson
Released October 17, 2008 (USA) / April 17, 2009 (Italy)

It's unlikely there's ever been a film with a title more doomed to define its outcome. The movie is a complete mystery, not regarding what will happen, but how anyone thought this movie would be a good, or rather an acceptable, production. The sense of laid-back effortlessness is devastatingly obvious. Robert DeNiro, once a great actor, walks around the set with little emotion and barely raises his voice to an audible pitch. The entire cast is one big group of friends - DeNiro and Sean Penn have starred in films together in the past, and Penn is married to Robin Wright Penn and cast Catherine Keener in his recent film "Into the Wild." It's as if this group of buddies was gathered together to sit around and talk about the movie business, and no one demanded a convincing or progressive story. Director Barry Levinson has made great large-scale films in the past, like "Bugsy," but this isn't a true effort. The synopsis of the film bills it as "Two weeks in the life of a fading Hollywood producer who's having a rough time trying to get his new picture made." That's hardly a compelling concept for a film, and it can't really get away without any legitimate progressive story. Casting both Sean Penn and Bruce Willis as themselves seems especially lazy, since the only way this movie could have been a little bit creative was if the story had been remotely original. Tragically, it's far from it, and manages to be boring and predictable. When it ends, the likely sentiment viewers will have is relief that the unneeded experience is over.

F