Hollywood has been making movies about movies almost as long as they’ve been making movies. But what’s the appeal of a movie about a movie? Assuming there is one; according to Box Office Mojo, a movie about a movie hasn’t grossed significantly over $100 million in twenty years, and that one had the obvious advantage of offering a glimpse into the marriage of a cartoon bombshell and a rabbit.
But what is it that makes the legitimately great Hollywood movies––the Sunset Boulevards, the Bad and the Beautifuls, the Players –– legitimately great? Maybe at some point, they were able to convincingly offer the illusion that one had been temporarily invited into an inner sanctum, seen the secret lives of stars, given a lesson in how the sausage is made, but today it’s hard to imagine anyone really believing that a given film has the power to blow the lid off the dream factory. The great Hollywood movies do traffic in the illusion of taking the viewer “inside,” but by layering irony, melodrama, and critique, they never fully strip Hollywood of its inherent mystery, which verges on mysticism. Hollywood plays itself best when reinforcing the tenants of its own myth, particularly those involving stars. At the end of a serious film about the movies, even a bone-dry satire like The Player, we’re supposed to walk away remaining a bit mystified as to the way that world works, as if it’s beyond and above both the constraints and the moral codes of “real life.” Old Hollywood reinforced its structuring lies by making movies which pushed the tacit understanding that us mere mortals would be out of our league if ever asked to operate under Hollywood’s dark laws.
What Just Happened? doesn’t feel like a serious film, but that’s not necessarily a reason to not recommend it. The reason to not recommend it is that it has no concept of that sense of mystery, and without it, it feels like there’s nothing at stake. And also, its best joke is the suggestion that Bruce Willis might be concerned with his own artistic integrity. Lacking any sense of connection to classical Hollywood meta-mythology yet filled with late 20th century cliche (Hollywood: it employs a lot of Jews!), Barry Levinson’s dramatization of real-life producer Art Linson’s memoir plays a lot like a feature-length episode of Entourage with a severe shortage of bimbos and hanger-on douchebags. If that sounds like an improvement on the Entourage formula, well, sort of. But the three sources of tensions entangled in Linson’s script never amount to much, which this isn’t a disappointment, exactly, because it was always clear they didn’t have any real weight to begin with.
Sprinkled with sore-thumb julienne-cut transitions and the odd deadpan dream sequence, What Just Happened? is an impatient zoom through a couple of days in the life of a harried super-producer (Robert DeNiro) modeled on Linson (who also produced this film). DeNiro battles a number of roughly-sketched personal problems and completely mundane professional problems. Like the Hollywood blockbusters his Linson clone produces (but which the film never sufficiently skewers), each of Happened?’s conflicts can be boiled down to a single, high-concept, 20 words or less logline that leaves no loose end untied. He’s got two weeks to get an addled artiste to tone down his ultraviolent Sean Penn vehicle before Cannes! He’s got three days to get Bruce Willis to stop throwing tantrums and shave his beard before the cameras roll! He’s got an open invite for nooners with his ex-wife, even though she’s clearly sleeping with a screenwriter with an argyle fetish! Of course, the best moments have nothing to do with any of these ticking time bombs; DeNiro is able to momentarily resucitate interest when animating Linson in his down time–when he quietly breaks out the Just For Men, when he slips into an angry fantasy at a funeral and then slips right out again. Otherwise, he’s just playing connect the dots.
That the bulk of the narrative streams out from a disasterous out-of-town test screening is unfortunate. As you may have heard by now, What Just Happened premiered at Sundance in January as a title with “buzz”, but once unveiled it was greeted with general indifference. Its Cannes premiere went a bit better, but an American distribution deal still proved elusive, and producers 2929 Entertainment eventually gave up the hunt for a suitor and decided to release the film through sister company Magnolia. You almost wonder if a cataclysmic premiere in another town would have been preferable — at least distaste or disgust might have aroused curiosity. You’d imagine there’d be more gravy to milk from anger than from a shrug. As it is, you can understand why buyer interest would be restrained. What Just Happened? is rarely unpleasant, but it even more rarely feels like it’s doing much of anything at all.
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SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth