What the fuck? I mean it. In a positive way. And that’s what the title should have been, not What Just Happened. The movie is R-rated in the States anyway (M-classified in Australia, but that’s beside the point). So it’s not like they had to worry about the f-word. In the US they seem to be a bit nervous about kids starting to swear all of a sudden. In Germany kids swear anyway, so it’s rated FSK12 there. Yes, this means 12 years of age. German kids have to learn how to deal with randomness and life shagging you doggy style from early on. Talking about doggy style: who wouldn’t want to go animalistic with Robin Wright Penn anyway? But wait, you’ll say, it’s Robert De Niro being fucked from behind. Now that changes things…

But let’s start before the sex. Ben (Robert De Niro), a very successful Hollywood producer, is just about to deliver the final cut of a highly ambitious, very arteestic studio backed movie: Fiercely. The main protagonist of that movie is Sean Penn (playing himself) and wants to do something “edgy”, the director (Michael Wincott) is a dry English Alcoholic and the studio boss (Catherine Keener) is a dry hot businesswoman. Although Ben can’t get his shit together life wise, he is good at what he does job wise: produce movies. And because he is so good at it he knows Fiercely is going to tank at the box office.

Therefore he does what any clever person in that business does and puts all his mojo into kick-starting the next movie before anyone has seen the previous one. Ok, not all his mojo. Some of it he puts into getting his family back and some he quite literally puts into beautiful female characters. Bruce Willis (playing himself), the star of this next movie, unfortunately turns out to be an arrogant dick and an asshole at the same time, which is quite an achievement if you think about it, is also working hard on draining that mojo. And I haven’t even mentioned John Turturro’s, Stanley Tucci’s or Kristen Stewart’s demands for Ben’s mojo.

What I find beautiful about this movie, beside the obvious, visually well formed beauty, are the randomness of life and life itself kicking in regularly. I’m not an obscenely rich and famous movie producer yet, but sometimes my life today does not seem to be that different from that future life of mine.

Ben, being obscenely rich and famous, is already one of the “30 Most Powerful People in the Industry”. That’s what Vanity Fair says about him in the film and that’s what is really REALLY important! Concentrate on this. It will comfort you. Not while watching the movie, but in your real life. Not because this tells you that you are watching a movie about a larger than life character from a land of dreams called Hollywood and that life there is this tiny little bit more interesting than yours, but because it tells you this: if you are an idiot and throw away anything good life threw at you first, your life will suck. Even in Hollywood.

So go out there and do better.

What Just Happened
(2008)

Director: Barry Levinson
Screenplay: Art Linson
Cinematography: Stéphane Fontaine
Editing: Hank Corwin
Score: Marcelo Zarvos
Cast: Robert De Niro, Sean Penn, Catherine Keener, Bruce Willis,John Turturro, Robin Wright Penn, Stanley Tucci, Michael Wincott.

M/C Reviews