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What Just Happened?
Magnolia Pictures


5.2

based on 32 reviews
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based on 5 votes
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MPAA 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)

GENRE(S):	Comedy \| Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Art Linson
DIRECTED BY:	Barry Levinson
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: February 24, 2009 Theatrical: October 17, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	107 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

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...

100

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

De Niro has never been more sneakily inventive.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

What Just Happened raises the tantrum to the level of an art form

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

A finely observed and occasionally outright hilarious glimpse at the most treacherous inner workings of Tinseltown.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Deep Hollywood inside-baseball, and for a while it cooks along with malevolent glee.

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.

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.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

What Just Happened? is a doodle, but its aura of dread seems earned.

Empire Andrew Male

A playful industry satire made by victors. That's actually pretty cold when you think about it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A fairly toothless Tinseltown exposé.

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.

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.

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.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

What Just Happened ends up feeling thoroughly pointless and more than a little dull.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Village Voice Ella Taylor

Begging for sympathy, What Just Happened? invites only schadenfreude.

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!

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What Just Happened? Magnolia Pictures

What Just Happened?
Magnolia Pictures