Review of What Just Happened (2008) by Jeff L — 08 Nov 2009

While this movie falls a little short in sheer narrative pleasure, it's still fun to watch Sean Penn and Bruce Willis play themselves larger than life.

If you already feel jaded towards the Hollywood establishment, this film doesn't have a lot to teach you. But as a meditation on the performative, fraudulent nature of power, it's an interesting story. Depending on who he's talking to in the pecking order, De Niro's character--a producer slowly falling from grace--switches from despot to cowering lackey, and De Niro plays his part very well.

So well that it becomes hard to watch. You want the characters to just say something real... to connect like regular human beings.

Bruce Willis carries the show with over-the-top outbursts of drama-queen rage. I think someone would have to be a pretty nice guy in real life to be able to play themselves as such a jerk in a movie.

One oddity: Bruce has a eulogy that includes a quote about how "Hollywood is a place where good men die like dogs." In the DVD trailer, he attributes the quote to his father. In the movie he attributes it to Hunter S. Thompson.

Your job? Spread this net rumor: Hunter S. Thompson was Bruce Willis' father. He knows it, but he's trying to cover it up. "My father" was an accidental slip that was cut from the film and replaced with the scripted "Hunter S. Thompson." A disgruntled employee slipped the out-take back into the DVD trailer.