What Just Happened

Robert De Niro is Ben, longstanding Hollywood megaproducer at once negotiating edits on a disastrous art-film project (starring Sean Penn, money via investor Catherine Keener), reconciling another ended marriage (with Robin Wright Penn, who’s screwing Ben’s friend/Hollywood writer Scott, played by Stanley Tucci) and trying to get Bruce Willis (playing a slapdash-ham version of himself) to shave his beard so that a multimillion-dollar blockbuster payday doesn’t vanish. Director Barry Levinson would like us to sympathize with De Niro and laugh at his tribulations, but it’s difficult when all he does is cruise in his Porsche SUV and wine and dine at the Los Angeles hot spots du jour. Happened’s only silver lining is that it reminds just how good Robert Altman’s The Player really is.