It’s been more than a decade since Barry Levinson’s last decent film (’97’s “Wag The Dog”), and about the same for Robert DeNiro give or take a few years and roles, but the satirical looking “What Just Happened,” cautiously looks like it could give us the best Hollywood send-up since Robert Atlman’s “The Player.”* Or at least it’s the first trailer for a Barry Levinson film that we’ve thought, “hey, yeah, that looks interesting, we could see that.”
Robert Deniro plays a self-involved Hollywood producer with an estranged wife (Robin Wright Penn); Michael Wincott plays a diva seemingly badass film director who cries at the first sign that the studio is going to take away his final cut. Sean Penn plays an A-list star, John Turturro plays a meek and timid agent and Bruce Willis plays an overweight and bearded Bruce Willis who refuses to shave, lose weight and look the part of a leading man. The rest of this impressive cast – man did they have a crazy budget or is everyone working for scale? – features Catherine Keener, Kristen Stewart and the great Stanley Tucci.
The studio synopsis (with some of the super-heated superlatives taken out they were so overwrought):
“What Just Happened” chronicles two nail-biting, back-stabbing, roller-coaster weeks in the world of a middle-aged Hollywood producer (Robert DeNiro) — as he tries to juggle an actual life with an outrageous series of crises in his day job. Academy Award-winning director Barry Levinson reunites with De Niro and screenwriter/producer Art Linson, who wrote the screenplay based on his bestselling memoir. They all join with an all-star cast (Sean Penn, Catherine Keener, John Turturro, Michael Wincott, Kristen Stewart, Stanley Tucci and Bruce Willis as a hirsute Bruce Willis) in this rollicking, shrewd tale of a man besieged by people who want him to be all sorts of things — a money maker, an ego buster, a bad news breaker, an artistic champion, a loyal husband, an all-knowing father, not to mention sexy, youthful and tuned-in – everything except for the one thing he and all the preposterously behaved people he’s surrounded by really are: bumbling human beings just trying to survive by any means necessary.
The pic looks fairly amusing, but as detailed above, these guys have been on quite the losing streak of late, so much so that we’re actually rooting for them here cause god, it’s painful watching DeNiro fumble with his acting choices over and over again. Willis’ send-up of himself does look entertaining though and hell it is a stellar cast. “What Just Happened” premiered at the Sundance earlier this year and then was eventually picked up by Magnolia Pictures and comes out October 3rd. *One of our friends recently just saw it she said it was good, but “Altman’s ‘Player’ did it better.” Sigh, figures. She does note that Turturro is “amazing” in it (again, not a huge suprise). We’re still interested though and definitely want to judge for ourselves.