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What Just Happened?
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 32 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 5 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Comedy | Drama
Written by: Art Linson
Directed by: Barry Levinson
Release Date:
Theatrical: October 17, 2008
DVD: February 24, 2009
Running Time: 107 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for language, some violent images, sexual content and some drug material
Starring Robert De Niro, Catherine Keener, Stanley Tucci, Robin Wright Penn, John Turturro, Michael Wincott, Bruce Willis, and Sean Penn
What Just Happened is a winningly sharp comedy about two nail-biting, back-stabbing, roller-coaster weeks in the world of a middle-aged Hollywood producer -- as he tries to juggle an actual life with an outrageous series of crises in his day job. Ben is already in over his head trying to balance the tug-of-war of having two ex-wives and two different families with his latest business venture – the boldly “visionary” movie Fiercely starring Sean Penn – when everything that can go wrong goes completely screwy. (Magnolia Pictures)
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What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
What Just Happened raises the tantrum to the level of an art form
Read Full Review >TV Guide Jason Buchanan
There's no denying the talent behind the film; unfortunately, almost everyone involved seems to know the system so well that they've neglected to inject their stereotypical caricatures with even a trace amount of personality.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Rambles a bit, but it has dryly obscene, laugh-out-loud lines, and its portrait of Hollywood as a giant anxiety attack is fused by De Niro.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Deviates greatly from Linson's winning little book in its particulars, but retains its sustained melancholy mood of low-key existential dread and dyspeptic wit.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Makes Hollywood looks like a very expensive, lethal version of high school, but lots of fun from a safe distance.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
The movie is brilliant at portraying the incredibly high stakes of the seemingly inconsequential and the tremendous amounts of money spent on it.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
A finely observed and occasionally outright hilarious glimpse at the most treacherous inner workings of Tinseltown.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Deep Hollywood inside-baseball, and for a while it cooks along with malevolent glee.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
This isn't a bad movie; it simply makes the mistake of believing that it has a wider appeal than is actually the case.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Think of it as old Hollywood's version of "Entourage," an insider's take on the greed and vanity that make Tinseltown tick.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
What Just Happened? is a doodle, but its aura of dread seems earned.
Read Full Review >Empire Andrew Male
A playful industry satire made by victors. That's actually pretty cold when you think about it.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Jamie Tipps
What Just Happened? is an industry in-joke between director Barry Levinson and his friends, who just happen to be Hollywood's heavy weights.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
The question is: What has Levinson and Linson brought to this re-make that is exciting, new and different? Not much.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
This is scarcely the first time prominent industry insiders have turned their lenses on their own kind to hold them up to public scrutiny, even ridicule, and in the annals of pictures about the film capital, writer-producer Art Linson and director Barry Levinson's rates somewhere in the midrange, both in quality and viciousness.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
It remains to be seen whether audiences will have the time or the inclination, just now, to sympathize with the stresses that beset a Hollywood producer and his pals.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
This isn't a Hollywood satire, it's a sitcom. The flywheels of the plot machine keep it churning around, but it chugs off onto the back lot and doesn't hit anybody in management.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
Small, mild, easy to watch and easier to forget, this adaptation of producer Art Linson’s Hollywood memoirs has the virtue of breeziness, and of Robert De Niro unwinding, after one too many tense performances.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak
The film strains to achieve the comedic gait of "Wag the Dog" or the improvised, overlapping style that so defined Robert Altman's Hollywood movie, "The Player."
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
"Tropic Thunder" did a better and more comical job of mocking the absurdities of the film business. Only sporadically funny, What Just Happened? has little to add to the canon of Hollywood-focused satires.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
De Niro carries this with the sighing, shambling-bear persona that's defined him in middle age. If you're looking for the sort of edge he had in the 70s, you'll have to settle for Catherine Keener doing her castrating-bitch routine as an icy studio chief.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
There are cutting laughs along the way, and Keener plays the hard-nosed studio chief with an insider's acumen, but, really, "Entourage" is better than this.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell
I come not to bury What Just Happened? the movie, but to praise "What Just Happened?" the book. Well, and to bury What Just Happened? the movie, which director Barry Levinson has rendered drab and humorless in the way the source material really, really isn't.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt
The real tragedy of What Just Happened isn't that it succumbs to predictable pseudo-satirical farce but that when it does, it loses sight of the very thing that could have made it a film worth caring about: the story of a man perpetually caught between art and business, between strength and weakness, between adoration and loneliness, between success and failure, between the movies and reality.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
What Just Happened ends up feeling thoroughly pointless and more than a little dull.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
All of them, under the pretext of offering a behind-the-scenes peek into the inner workings of the industry, do little more than kick around a heap of tired clichés.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
More self-congratulatory than it is vicious, or even illuminating, and it dawdles when it needs to crack along at a clip.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
Willis hits the right level of parody - he, too, looks like he's having fun - yet even his "egomaniacal Bruce Willis" feels less like a necessary part of this forgettable movie and more like a clip from the gossip pages.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
Who, exactly, do Mr. Levinson and the screenwriter, Art Linson, expect to invest time and interest -- to say nothing of thought or feeling -- in this meandering, passive-aggressive comedy of Hollywood inconsequence?
Read Full Review >Village Voice Ella Taylor
Begging for sympathy, What Just Happened? invites only schadenfreude.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.2 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Serge Z gave it a1:
I have never seen such an elite cast produce such a dull, tiresome, movie before. I was nodding off after the first 15 minutes.
reed f gave it a5:
The movie successfully condenses some of the book's more memorable stories, but to us who have read this and Linson's other masterpiece, the even-more-aescerbic Pound of Flesh, it's hard to appreciate as a movie at all. In fact, Linson's edgy and sometimes visionary films as producer have all taken on a new quality since his books came out, bleakly and defeatedly portraying them from a nightmarish insider stance, and constantly joking about the failures of even multi-award-winning films. So to watch What Just Happened is less enjoyable than it should be, because it feels like Linson is every character, and Linson has too long painted himself as a punching bag for Hollywood. Then consider its spot-on portrayal of the industry, and it rules out widespread appreciation. The biggest disappointment, though, is the film's insistence on not having fun. It has the ideas, and deviates wildly from the book (an essentially non-fictional recounting of real-life disasters for real-life films) to try and tell them, but this could have been better as a sit-down 90 minute interview with Linson and friends, rather than this long exercise in called-in favors. Two things ran through my mind the entire story. First, Bruce Willis is exactly recreating the true tantrums of Alec Baldwin, who I'm sure was considered for but not willing to play the role -- it was a mistake to put it on screen in any other format. Second, Linson said in his books (via his ruthless buddy character and real life friend) that his only claim to career is having Bobby (De Niro)'s home number. This movie is a laundry list of De Niro connections, and its direction a favor to Linson. It is more an opportunity fumbled than a bad movie. And there's one more thing against the picture: it is, despite having no overt ties, coming late after The TV Set (2006), which had beards, celebrity, compromise and even De Niro jokes in plenty. The TV Set could easily be confused as a spiritual adaptation of What Just Happened, and is possibly better. Sorry, Linson! I do love your films!
stano gave it an8:
Better than average dry comedy. Its a believable movie with some good acting and an interesting premise.
Jay H gave it a6:
Fair movie, I have seen a number of similar movies on Hollywood movie making, so it's nothing new. It didn't always hold my interest, but it wasn't awful or anything. Good cast.
Billy S. gave it a6:
What just happened was Barry Levinson, director of Rain Man, Avalon and Wag The Dog, has been kidnapped by aliens and replaced with a Hollywood Pod person pretending to be a great Director. Bring back the real Levinson!
