The only appeal is watching the long list of celebrities in the cast poke fun at their industry—a small consolation considering how sharp this film could have been.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 2, 2023

What Just Happened is artistically disjointed and lacking in courage. Apparently the stellar cast wanted to make a hard-hitting piece-the various performers worked for scale.

| Sep 2, 2020

The laboured, almost morose storytelling style doesn't help.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 4, 2018

The satire lacks the bite of The Player.

| Dec 30, 2017

Precise, smart, and very funny in its specifics but rather clumsy and obvious when it comes to the big picture.

| Aug 15, 2011

| Original Score: C+ | May 6, 2011

Worth seeing, especially for people interested in the inner workings of the Hollywood machine, but don't go in expecting a laugh a minute.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 30, 2009

It's a pungent film about Hollywood power and a useful manual for young producers on how to stay upright in Hollywood or at least, how to lose your soul with grace.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 24, 2009

It's not Bowfinger but it's well worth the ticket.

| May 22, 2009

In an era where old rope such as Fast & Furious can strangle the box office, any reminder of Hollywood's clueless cynicism is more than welcome.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 22, 2009

What Just Happened, despite an air of crisis, feels sluggish and plodding.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 21, 2009

An insider's Hollywood story, Barry Levinson's film lacks the bite of other admired "movie movies", such as The Player, or way back, The Bad and the Beautiful.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 21, 2009

I don't think it's particularly funny and I think that's the problem with the film. I think it wants to be funny.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 20, 2009

It's a shame that the film doesn't ever really take off into the stratosphere, because so many of the ingredients are funny and revealing. But this is just another case where it was a better read than a film.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 20, 2009

A welcome return to form from Robert De Niro, who has not been so proactively reactive on-screen for many, many years.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 20, 2009

It's also mercifully free of the kind of phony pretensions to subversion and irreverence that weighed down, say, Robert Altman's The Player.

| May 20, 2009

The film must have great resonance in Hollywood, which loves nothing more than to see its innards hung out in proud dirty linen fashion, but the nebulous structure and meandering storytelling leaves the rest of us a little dissatisfied.

| May 16, 2009

Based on the Art Linson autobiography, this half-baked insider parody tries hard to be madcap.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 23, 2009

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| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 22, 2009

More understated than sidesplitting, this biting satire of showbiz offers an amusing enough inside peek at what life might be like in Tinseltown to remain recommended, its mostly inside industry jokes notwithstanding.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 27, 2009