What Just Happened?

The life of a Hollywood producer is full of bizarre encounters with belligerent actors, eccentric directors, and hard-nosed executives, which makes for some odd-ball stories. Such stranger-than-fiction tales delighted readers in producer Art Linson’s 2002 memoir “What Just Happened?: Bitter Hollywood Tales From the Front Line.” Linson’s memoir serves as the backbone for director Barry Levinson’s movie “What Just Happened?” yet the stories fall short of entertaining once translated to the screen.

“What Just Happened?” chronicles two weeks in the life of Hollywood producer Ben (Robert De Niro) as he deals with his two ex-wives, three children, the post-production of what is sure to be an audience-offending flop, and an obstinate Bruce Willis (as a parody of himself) who refuses to shave his revolting, overgrown beard for an upcoming movie. As if having De Niro and Willis wasn’t enough star power, Sean Penn appears as the star of the movie within the movie. He’s joined by Catherine Keener as a ball-busting executive, Robin Wright Penn as Ben’s second wife, John Turturro as Willis’s agent, and Stanley Tucci as a writer trying to make a deal with Ben while seducing Ben’s ex-wife.

Excluding De Niro, the rest of the star-studded cast is barely ever seen. Sean Penn is a major disappointment and only appears on screen for five minutes—which is just long enough for him to get shot, roll down a hill, and be shot again. De Niro’s acting, which normally dominates the screen with its intensity, is flat and lackluster. He seems to want his character to be stony and cold, but instead comes off as indifferent and detached. Perhaps De Niro has just made one too many movies; he seriously looks like he needs a break.

Levinson, who won the Oscar for best director in 1988 for “Rain Man,” is not in top-notch form. In “What Just Happened?” the individual scenes creep along, especially during the first third of the movie as Levinson tries to establish Ben’s world. Between the sluggish pace and De Niro’s uninspired acting, there’s nothing to keep audiences’ eyes open other than Levinson’s use of fast cuts to transition between scenes. These cuts create an offputting pace that first lulls the audience into drowsiness and then jolts them awake.

Linson, who wrote the screenplay, and Levinson try to incorporate multiple plots into Ben’s life, but many drag on too long. Ben’s anger at his friend, played by Tucci, for sleeping with his ex-wife two years after their divorce is especially asinine and interminable. In the end, despite all of his frantic efforts to accomplish so much, Ben’s only crowning achievement is to get Willis to shave off the left half of his beard.

Unfortunately for Ben, all of his other endeavors fall short or seem to mess him up more, leading to what is essentially the big lesson of the story: in Hollywood, one day you’re up and the next you’re down. Since the world has never heard that one before, this movie is sure to give viewers important insight into the human condition. Or, more likely, it will simply bore them with its trite message.

Where Levinson and De Niro so brilliantly portrayed the absurdity of Hollywood’s power in their 1997 collaboration “Wag the Dog,” the same theme—along with De Niro—seems tired and hackneyed in “What Just Happened?” If viewers want exposure to interesting, true Hollywood stories, they should just read Linson’s book.

Toward the end of the movie, Robin Wright Penn poses the question “What just happened?” Yet most viewers will probably think to themselves, “I couldn’t care less.”

—Staff writer Edward F. Coleman can be reached at efcolem@fas.harvard.edu.