What just happened

Starring Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis. Directed by Barry Levinson. M.

The movie industry and Hollywood culture are ripe satirical targets - and although this soft spoof has several funny moments and a good cast, the whole movie amounts to less than the sum of its parts. Directing What Just Happened is Barry Levinson (Rain Man, Good Morning Vietnam), whose Wag the Dog is already one of the better such satires, and Robert De Niro stars as top movie producer Ben who suddenly finds his power credentials on the line.

Ben has two crises: a test audience hated his latest film, a killer thriller starring Sean Penn, while he also discovers that the star for his new blockbuster, Bruce Willis, has shown up with a big beard and a bad attitude, threatening the production's future by refusing to shave it off.

Harried Ben, with omnipresent phone in his ear, has to deal with an upset British director (Michael Wincott), a powerful studio boss (Catherine Keener) and Willis's anxious agent (John Turturro).

Simultaneously, Ben's trying to rekindle his relationship with his estranged second wife (Robin Wright Penn), whom he suspects is seeing a double-dealing screenwriter (Stanley Tucci), plus there's the funeral to attend of an agent who might have been seeing Ben's teenage daughter (a moody Kristen Stewart).

Art Linson (Fight Club) based his screenplay on his insider non-fiction memoir, subtitled Bitter Hollywood Tales from the Front Line, and cynically skewers temperamental directors and stars, Hollywood egos in general and the idea of artistic integrity versus studio power as well as a culture of personal indulgence, therapy (Ben and his ex-wife have counselling on how to break up in a way they'll never want to see each other again) and infidelities (it's all right to have an affair if you're unhappily married).

De Niro is better here than he's been in too long a time - and the rest of the cast is equally commendable, especially Willis's mocking mercurial, self-absorbed star.

Movies such as The Player and even Tropic Thunder or the entertaining TV series Entourage have shown how effective film-making lampoons can be.

But What Just Happened is never more than a skipping stone parody across the familiar waters of Hollywood egotism, treachery, superficiality and self-interest.

It's people behaving badly in tabloid Tinseltown - and you might have a chuckle and a snigger at their antics but you couldn't care less about them.

- © Fairfax NZ News