What Just Happened

Based on Art Linson’s breezy, thoroughly entertaining memoir, What Just Happened initially comes off as an eye-opening glimpse into the behind-the-scenes world of a Hollywood producer (Robert De Niro’s Ben). Ben’s efforts at shepherding a troubled endeavor through its post-production phase – as well as his ongoing ordeal with a new picture starring Bruce Willis (and his shaggy beard) – is certainly as interesting and compelling as one might’ve hoped, with De Niro’s ingratiating performance matched by an impressive list of co-stars that includes Catherine Keener, John Turturro, and Michael Wincott. The slow-but-steady introduction of elements that simply aren’t all that engaging – eg Ben’s relationship with his teenage daughter (Kristen Stewart’s Zoe) – does ensure that the film suffers from an awfully tedious and random midsection, with Barry Levinson’s penchant for punching up scenes with a free-wheeling, French-New-Wave directorial sensibility serving only to highlight the increasingly (and egregiously) random atmosphere. It’s subsequently not surprising to note that What Just Happened fizzles out to an astonishing degree as it limps towards its entirely underwhelming finale, which essentially comes off as a slightly plausible (yet hopelessly derivative) riff on the flat-out absurd conclusion of 2001’s America’s Sweethearts. The end result is an effort whose negatives outweigh its positives by an almost overpowering margin, and one ultimately can’t help but lament the transformation of a stellar book into an utterly disappointing misfire.

** out of ****