The joke with What Just Happened is that its a mainstream film with big stars and they want to pass it off as an independent film. This is a satirical look at the chaos of Hollywood and film making based on the memoirs of film producer Art Linson and directed by Barry Levinson.Robert De Niro is the frazzled producer balancing his precarious personal and professional lives. He has to deal with a prima donna Bruce Willis who refuses to shave off his beard and a highly strung British director who wants an uncompromising ending to a Sean Penn film where a dog meets a nasty fate much to the chagrin of the film studio boss.Its fun poke at Hollywood filled with star turns who are in on the joke and seem to enjoy themselves especially Willis and Penn. I liked Catherine Keener as he studio head who has given an ultimatum to De Niro to fix the film ending and Michael Wincott as the sly director.However we have seen this before and also its been more funnier, bitter and cynical in films such as The Player, The Big Knife, The Big Picture or Sunset Boulevard. Levinson and De Niro wielded a sharper knife when they made Wag the Dog but their effort is more hollow here.

is a satirical inside-look into the cut-throat politics behind Hollywood film productions.Based on Hollywood producer Art Linson's novel "What Just Happened? Bitter Hollywood Tales from the Front Line", this film adaptation is a day in the life of a powerful Hollywood producer, and his unending struggles to remain both powerful and active as a film producer. Hollywood producer Ben (Robert De Niro) is at the peak of a mid-life crisis in a frustrating act juggling personal and professional problems, one after the other. As a producer, his new film "Fiercely", is not well received at a test screening especially due to its violent ending of the main character (Sean Penn playing himself) and the character's pet dog. When the test screening receives bad reviews (because "the dog never dies"), studio executive Lou Tarnow (Catherine Keener) threatens an independent final cut if director Jeremy Brunell (Michael Wincott) does not edit the dog's violent death. Now finding himself as the lowly middle man, Ben has to either convince his emotionally unstable British director to let the dog live or risk being fired by the studio chief, in addition to having his film pulled out of the Cannes premier lineup. On the other hand, Ben finds it hard to reconcile with second wife Kelly (Robin Wright Penn), and when he does make an honest attempt to do so, finds that Kelly may be sleeping with a screenwriter whose script he once rejected. Back in the editing room, Ben's persuasion seems to get through to Brunell when the latter edits the film to have the dog live. But his stress levels shoot up again with the studio's new project, where the leading man (Bruce Willis as himself) won't shave off his grisly bear beard. In the end, Ben finds himself thrown into the centre of a crap pit by an egotistical leading actor, a tantrum throwing director, a two-timing ex-wife and a female studio chief itching to end his career.Casual moviegoers seated in a cinema are most often oblivious to the power play behind the making of the very movie they have come to watch. While most movie enthusiasts have little understanding as to what a film producer does, acclaimed producer and director Steven Soderbergh may have inadvertently blown the lid in a recent televised interview marketing "What Just Happened". According to Soderbergh, a major film may have up to fifteen producers involved in the making of that film, but only four of these producers are actually involved in the production. Strangely, the remaining producers have no clue as to what is happening but end up with a credit, nonetheless. Thousands of miles across the globe, legendry (Bollywood) Indian film maker Yash Chopra has his own opinion, "A film producer is as good as his last film". Considering that Linson last produced the feel-good adventure "Into the Wild", along with his all time acclaim from "The Untouchables", Chopra may be onto something here. The same also holds true for director Barry Levinson which brings to mind his Hollywood themed political satire, "Wag the Dog". As a Hollywood parody of sorts, Linson's script here almost hits the mark but not so much in comparison with Michael Tolkin's very similar script for "The Player". The obvious difference between the two is the Hollywood insider jokes in Linson's satire, while Tolkin's Caricature caters to a general audience. But wrapping up this otherwise decent package is nicely done by Levinson and somewhat salvages what could have been a disastrous plot. On the acting front, the all star cast delivers as expected, with De Niro, Wincott and Willis proving their ability in comedy, having taken for granted these actors usually opt for action-thriller films. While the Penns share limited screen time in their individual roles, John Turturro as Bruce Willis' casting agent also contributes towards some of the hilarious one-liners with some palpable chemistry in supporting De Niro's lines.The dual climax of the film and also some of its intentionally funny suspense is whether or not the dog lives in the final cut and Bruce Willis shaving his enormous beard, each determining the fate of Ben's career amongst the 30 most powerful producers to appear on "Vanity Fair". While one scenario is predictable, the other will most likely be unexpected and goes to prove that the most powerful force responsible for a film's reception is not the actor or the director or the producer, nor the studio executive. It is us, the audience and the critics.

At one time, Art Linson was one of the top film producers working in Hollywood responsible for films like "Fight Club", "The Unotuchables", "The Edge" and others. Some of his experiences in the film business were gathered in a book, and this book became this film starring Robert DeNiro, who plays a film producer that goes under the same issues Linson had in his career. "What Just Happened?" doesn't add much in terms of what we know about Hollywood and their secrets, doesn't have the same sarcasm and bite as Altman's "The Player" but it is watchable, slightly funny and has its moments.It's tough to be a famous producer in Hollywood. You have to deal with egomaniacs actors who don't want to shave their beards to make a film (Bruce Willis plays himself portraying a similar event that happened with Alec Baldwin on the set of "The Edge") delaying schedules and budget; the same holy man has to deal with actors agents, studio bosses, directors who are hard to handle because they want to protect their material, they wanna leave it as it was conceived (here comes the sickest joke of the film when the director within the movie filmed the killing of a dog, which causes a shocked reaction at the film's screening test and DeNiro has to make the editor cut down the scene). And the same producer has to take care of his ex-wives and kids, release more films and work on new developments.The guy is beat down, has a weak influence on the town and even weaker on the people who seem to push this guy down to the ground. He has to step down on everything and even when he thinks he's winning something he gets fooled again. Bottom of line is: everybody wants to move forward, no one can move one centimeter back because the only one who must do that is the producer. But in the end everything gets solved, the picture is made and everybody's happy or at least close to that since you can't embrace all audiences. This movie didn't conquered everybody at all even with a super stellar cast with names like Sean Penn, Catherine Keener, Robin Wright Penn, John Turturro, Michael Wincott, Kristen Stewart, Peter Jacobson, Stanley Tucci and the fore-mentioned Willis and DeNiro; the level of discussion about the amount of dislikes here are bigger than the Everest; and with a budget of US$25,000,000, the return was pretty low worldwide. But people missed the point of this film, and there is one if you look real closer. It's all about how a man always closer to end his career by making a giant mistake in one of his films has the ability of surprise himself and others by letting things go. He gets metaphorically beaten up by the system where he's a great star, doesn't punch back so much, seems to have all under control and when you think he's heading for a disaster that might kill his career he succeeds it. But audiences can relate with him or the other characters? Difficult but not impossible. It has its flaws, sometimes Barry Levinson loses the sense for sarcastic comedies ("Wag the Dog" was way better) and makes a film that takes too much time to display a funny moment, I mean, the screenplay doesn't work quite right. The great thing about the film is the performances, all great, most notably DeNiro and Michael Wincott, playing a tough film director that sounds like Keith Richards, the guy mentioned earlier for the dog scene, he steals the show. If the movie wanted to make its audience feel sorry for film producers out there who are trying to make their job done well it failed because they underestimate their audience, specially Hollywood producers, who only want money instead of showing a good spectacle. I don't feel sorry for them, although in this film DeNiro makes of his producer such an nice character compared to other producers presented in other films of the genre that you might feel different about the filmmaking process and how producers suffer a little bit. Good idea but it wasn't something that people really wanted to see it with such a talented cast. 8/10

Watching that film until the end was by far a worse experience than snorting a line of rock salt while having your privates connected to a car battery. Nope, haven't tried the latter but that's the worst experience I could think of at the moment. As some reviewers put it quite correctly, that is not a film intended for general audiences, not even for a cinephile having sat on a festival jury, endowed with an extremely open mind and an advanced understanding that not everything in life is ever perfect. It falls in the category of utter belly-button scratching and, by this, I don't even mean intimist. Okokok, so the acting is good. Yeah, big deal. Talented actors and directors don't make a film stand out if there is no substance to start with and this one's a perfect example of a known fact. It's only redeeming quality is that you could watch it with a force ten hangover and actually forget about your condition.