What Just Happened: Review By Rama's SCREEN

WHAT JUST HAPPENED? Robert De Niro just starred in a really awful comedy movie, that’s what happened. This is, without a doubt, one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen and it saddens me to know that… one of the greatest actors of our time made such a terrible choice. This makes me wonder if his glory days are behind him and it might go downhill from here on out for the Raging Bull. Watching WHAT JUST HAPPENED is like being kicked in the face repeatedly. How I wish I could go back in time and tell the past version of me to get out of the theater before he’d see another minute of this abomination... let's not forget De Niro was also in the lame RIGHTEOUS KILL, wait, on second thought, let's definitely forget about that one.

Director Barry Levinson used to be associated with such greats as Good Morning Vietnam, Rain Man, Bugsy, Wag the Dog, but in recent years, he’s been responsible for flops like Bandits and Envy and now this catastrophe. All that this movie’s got is an al star cast, that’s it, the rest of it is a fiesta of crap for those who are easily amused. If you wanna see a better presentation about making fun of Hollywood and the studio heads and the workings of agents and satire on producing movies, then just watch TV’s Entourage or Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder because all that WHAT JUST HAPPENED? is going to do is annoy you to the bone. It’s more torturous than Hostel movies, that’s how bad it is. Robert De Niro only has a few scenes that sorta make him somewhat believable as a movie producer but for the most part, he’s still that mafia godfather Italian boss type.

What I hate the most is the comedy. WHAT JUST HAPPENED? is Not Funny, plain and simple. It does show how insensitive the Tinseltown can be and how it’s dog-eat-dog world in the movie business where you’re only as good as the money you can bring in and then you bring down your marriage, your family, and your connections in the process. One small mistake could be the difference between part of the powerful list and lawsuit or unemployment. It shows all that, the thing is… don’t claim to be comedy, don’t try to be comedy if you’re not going to be funny. All of the humor, the jokes, the puns in this one don’t even make you chuckle. It’s got some Curb Your Enthusiasm moment but it fails to make anybody laugh… the whole shaky camera work to make it look like a doc*mentary fails to entertain anybody and sadly, it has to settle for John Turturro’s character experiencing stomachache, even that comes across as dumb than funny. You’ll wanna pull your hair out. The story is based on the memoir by author Art Linson and the script itself was adapted by Art Linson himself.. and you know what… Art Linson should never write a script ever again… ever!