What Just Happened? (2008)
Average Rating: 5.8/10
Reviews Counted: 139
Fresh: 71 | Rotten: 68
What Just Happened has some inspired comic moments, but this inside-baseball take on Hollywood lacks satirical bite.
Average Rating: 5.8/10
Critic Reviews: 34
Fresh: 15 | Rotten: 19
What Just Happened has some inspired comic moments, but this inside-baseball take on Hollywood lacks satirical bite.
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Average Rating: 2.6/5
User Ratings: 12,276
My Rating
Movie Info
Inspired by the personal memoirs of Hollywood producer Art Linson, Barry Levinson's fictional showbiz comedy stars Robert De Niro as a struggling movie producer who has just suffered through his second divorce, and slowly finds his soul being ground up in the machinations of the Hollywood machine. Ben (De Niro) is an aging producer whose career was already on a downward turn when his personal life went straight into the toilet. Not only is Ben juggling two ex-wives and a daughter who seems to
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Cast
-
Robert De Niro
Ben -
Catherine Keener
Lou Tarnow -
Sean Penn
Himself -
John Turturro
Dick Bell -
Robin Wright
Kelly -
Stanley Tucci
Scott Solomon -
Kristen Stewart
Zoe -
Michael Wincott
Jeremy Brunell -
Bruce Willis
actor -
Jason Kravitz
pollster -
Mark Ivanir
Johnny -
Remy K. Selma
Jimmy -
Christopher Evan Welch
Studio marketing guy -
Lily Rabe
Dawn -
Sam Levinson
Carl -
Logan Grove
Max -
Alessandra Danielle
Sophie -
Karina Buck
Verna -
Peter Jacobson
Cal -
Moon Bloodgood
Laura -
Ari Barak
Aba Peterson -
Paul Herman
Jerry -
Jonathan Charles Kaplan
Suit 1 -
Brandon Keener
Young studio executive -
Terrance Yates
dance instructor -
Ron Li-Paz
Rabbi
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What Just Happened? Trailer & Photos
All Critics (139) | Top Critics (34) | Fresh (76) | Rotten (68) | DVD (10)
A film that feels every bit the product of its purportedly ruthless and artistically corrupting milieu.
Top CriticIn some ways, What Just Happened feels like an attempt to, if not make amends for moviemaking myopia, at least show how easily the contagion takes hold.
What Just Happened? is just a plain clumsy movie.
What Just Happened? has already happened and, to everyone but Levinson, that shouldn't be surprising.
The sharpest Hollywood satire since The Player.
The problem with Hollywood movies about the Hollywood film industry is: You've seen one, you've seen them all.
Precise, smart, and very funny in its specifics but rather clumsy and obvious when it comes to the big picture.
Worth seeing, especially for people interested in the inner workings of the Hollywood machine, but don't go in expecting a laugh a minute.
It's a pungent film about Hollywood power and a useful manual for young producers on how to stay upright in Hollywood or at least, how to lose your soul with grace.
It's not Bowfinger but it's well worth the ticket.
In an era where old rope such as Fast & Furious can strangle the box office, any reminder of Hollywood's clueless cynicism is more than welcome.
What Just Happened, despite an air of crisis, feels sluggish and plodding.
An insider's Hollywood story, Barry Levinson's film lacks the bite of other admired "movie movies", such as The Player, or way back, The Bad and the Beautiful.
I don't think it's particularly funny and I think that's the problem with the film. I think it wants to be funny.
It's a shame that the film doesn't ever really take off into the stratosphere, because so many of the ingredients are funny and revealing. But this is just another case where it was a better read than a film.
A welcome return to form from Robert De Niro, who has not been so proactively reactive on-screen for many, many years.
It's also mercifully free of the kind of phony pretensions to subversion and irreverence that weighed down, say, Robert Altman's The Player.
The film must have great resonance in Hollywood, which loves nothing more than to see its innards hung out in proud dirty linen fashion, but the nebulous structure and meandering storytelling leaves the rest of us a little dissatisfied.
Based on the Art Linson autobiography, this half-baked insider parody tries hard to be madcap.
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More understated than sidesplitting, this biting satire of showbiz offers an amusing enough inside peek at what life might be like in Tinseltown to remain recommended, its mostly inside industry jokes notwithstanding.
More understated than sidesplitting, this biting satire of showbiz offers an amusing enough inside peek at what life might be like in Tinseltown to remain recommended, its mostly inside industry jokes notwithstanding.
Like the perpetual insider crap shoot and big bucks blown on questionable movie fare, Levinson is willing to take his chances on that backroom and behind the scenes pathological reality show drama known as Hollywood.
There are a few other clever pokes at Hollywood, but many of the jokes, including a subplot about a Sean Penn thriller that needs fixing, falls flat.
Audience Reviews for What Just Happened?
Super Reviewer
"Admit nothing."
What Just Happened? is a decent attempt at bringing Hollywood to a more honest light. Not everything seems to work, but there's a lot of great stuff going on in the film. We're given a great cast, a decent story, and a terrific director in Barry Levinson. As the film runs along, I was always interested. This movie hasn't gotten a lot of slack and it all just seems unjustified to me. Sure the movie isn't a masterpiece, but it's a serviceable drama with some great performances.
A Hollywood film producer is being overcome by many negative factors that he has to deal with in his job. He's going through the divorce process, he has a movie that isn't being received well, that they need to recut, but a director who doesn't want to change it, and also another movie with a star actor(Bruce Willis as Bruce Willis), who doesn't want to shave his beard. He has to take all this on at the same time and still try to keep his sanity.
Robert De Niro delivers a pretty good role here as the struggling producer. He's backed up by a good supporting cast that includes Stanley Tucci, Bruce Willis, Catherine Keener, Sean Penn, and Kristen Stewart. The cast is outstanding and that's what makes the movie work just enough. The cast makes the kind of boring story a lot more entertaining.
In the end the film is worth a look and I enjoyed it. It has moments that are funny, if in an off the wall sort of way, but funny nonetheless. Also some of the satire on Hollywood is quite aggressive and interesting. Maybe all of it isn't completely original, but the way it's presented makes for a good time.
Super Reviewer
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Latest News on What Just Happened?
August 1, 2008:
Trailer Bulletin: What Just HappenedThe first trailer for Barry Levinson's What Just Happened has hit the Web, and Moviefone's got it!
July 7, 2008:
Exclusive Red-band Clip: What Just Happened?What's funnier than Bruce Willis dropping f-bombs left and right, trashing a room, and menacing...
May 15, 2008:
Cannes 2008: Well, Well, Well...If It Isn't the 2008 Cannes Lineup!Spring is in the air, and Hollywood's biggest stars are headed for France. You know what that means,...
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Foreign Titles
- What Just Happened (DE)
- What Just Happened (UK)
