What Just Happened? belongs to that subgenre known as the Hollywood satire. From Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard to Robert Altman’s The Player, these films act as a necessary corrective to the glossy view of Hollywood as an enchanted place where everyone simply loves working with so many wonderful, talented, generous people.

The trouble is that the Hollywood satire — of which Rolling Thunder is a recent example — often promises to bite the hand that feeds it, only to deliver itself a self-congratulatory pat on the back. So, while a film may invite sniggers at the silly, self-important stars, its subtext says something very different: “Look, everyone, we big stars can laugh at ourselves — aren’t we great!”

Directed by Barry Levinson (Rain Man, Wag the Dog), What Just Happened? is based on the memoirs of a Hollywood producer, Art Linson (Fight Club, Heat). It’s the story of a middle-aged producer, Ben (Robert De Niro), trying against the odds to stop his life from spinning out of control.

Poor Ben. His new arty action film — with Sean Penn as “Sean Penn” — is a disaster. At a test screening, the audience start to boo and walk out when the bad guys blow away a dog. The studio boss, Lou (Catherine Keener), is demanding an audience-friendly recut; its crazy English director is insisting Ben defends his artistic vision. Meanwhile, another studio is threatening to close down another of Ben’s projects if Bruce Willis doesn’t shave his big, bushy beard. On top of all this, Ben has problems with agents, ex-wives, kids and his therapist.

Linson’s book is subtitled Bitter Tales from the Hollywood Front Line, but there’s nothing bitter about the film. On the contrary, it’s tempting to dismiss it for its lack of bite and bile. This is not a hard-hitting exposé of Hollywood, but then what is there left to expose? Do we need yet another film telling us Hollywood is full of lying, back-stabbing egomaniacs?

One of the appealing things about the film is the modesty of its intent: it’s a comedy that uses Hollywood as a backdrop, not as a punchbag. The script, by Linson, is surprisingly funny. And, as well as the pleasure of seeing Keener as the cold, powerful studio head and John Turturro as a cowardly agent, it offers something we haven’t seen in a very long while: a great performance from De Niro.

He must have been tempted to overplay the pressures on Ben and give a big, crazy portrayal of a man cracking under the strain, but De Niro goes the other way and underplays his character’s plight, thus making Ben a real human being we can care about, not a caricature of a Hollywood player.

15, 102 mins

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