Review of What Just Happened (2008) by Matthew O — 15 Jan 2010

'What Just happened' is In a Similar vain to the film The Player.

The film follows a Hollywood film producer and a week in his life. Casting Robert De Niro as the lead is an inspiring choice. The reason being is at the core Deniro is one of the biggest Hollywood actors of his generation, and a difficult person to get on with within the industry, a main theme of the film with both the Deniro character and the actors within the story of the film example Bruce Willis playing Bruce Willis.

Ben (Deniro) has two main challenges, the first is with a film and the films director who are struggling to conform to the Hollywood style of film making. The film's controversial ending, which sees the hero's dog take a bullet to the head in lurid close-up, proves a sticking point; a shock to the system which Ben likens to the audience taking their kids to Disneyland and seeing "Mickey Mouse douse himself in gasoline and set himself on fire.".

The other problem is Bruce Willis failing to shave off his beard.

'What just happened' is not an all out comedy and mainy of the jokes miss the mark, but the film works better as an inside look at the industry, which the viewer hasn't seen in film format for a while.

The film will not stick your mind for long. Still as is proven Robert Deniro seems to be making better comedies than Dramas recently, so his performance alone is worth the price of admission.