The jokes on the entertainment industry in Barry Levinson’s What Just Happened, but much like last year’s How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, it comes without a punch line. With the memoirs of veteran producer Art Linson (The Untouchables, Fight Club) fuelling the fire, one would have thought that this satirical take on the melodrama of Tinseltown would be hard biting. Yet despite some inspired moments – such as seeing Sean Penn and Bruce Willis send up their own star profiles – What Just Happened only ever takes a carefully considered chew.

Maybe Art Linson was too scared of being forthright about who he was making a joke of when writing the screenplay, safe housing himself in ambiguity, as What Just Happened doesn’t quite point the finger directly enough.  Linson has adapted the very real issues he had when producing Fight Club and The Edge into hardly recognisable fictitious ones, such as Sean Penn’s new thriller ‘Fiercely’. Robert De Niro steps in as the film’s producer Ben, who is under great pressure from Studio Executive Lou to get the film’s overzealous British director (Michael Wincott) to cut the final scene where the dog is shot dead. To make matters worse, he’s also pleading with Bruce Willis to shave off his beard so that he looks like a leading man and not the next Joaquin Phoenix. Of course, both men would much rather throw all manner of unfixed objects around the room in a spit of rage rather than give up their ‘artistic integrity’. This leaves Ben with little time between sweet talking into his hands-free to try and get back together with ex-wife Kelly (Robin Wright Penn).

The outcome of this exhausting routine is apparently neither here nor there; just as we start to feel a part of this flashy world of spoilt snobs and their phoney smiles, our 90 minute backstage pass expires and the credits start to roll. It’s at this point where the question of ‘what just happened?‘ becomes ‘why happen at all?’

As a satirical slice of stardom, What Just Happened can be faulted for being too close to the truth to be truly funny. Aside from the enjoyably exaggerated performances of Willis and Wincott, the film’s in-jokes are exactly that – too understated for anyone outside the industry to really appreciate. As the hardline studio executive Lou, Catherine Keener isn’t nearly as fun as Tom Cruises’ overly belligerent take on the same role in Tropic Thunder.  In the British sitcom Extras, stars played up themselves in a fashion that was instantly recognisable to anyone and everyone; Orlando Bloom thought he was God’s gift to women and Kate Winslet admitted she was only doing a Holocaust film to get an Oscar. While What Just Happened has the inner working of Hollywood well on display – from disastrous test screenings to industry funerals that double as recruitment opportunities – it struggles to muster much laughter from these scenarios because, to an outside audience, there’s hardly a recognisable caricature within them.  The only one that seems to get away with subtle satire is Robert De Niro, who acts as the audience’s relatable mediator between the overbearing Hollywood stereotypes.

Verdict:

What Just Happened is likely to be enjoyed by those familiar with the inner workings of Hollywood, but the mostly gutless array of industry jokes struggles to hit the funny bone like it should.

Follow the author Anders Wotzke on Twitter.