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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
WHAT JUST HAPPENED
The major joke throughout this bit of Hollywood insider kvetching is that the plot centers on a cache of terrible films in various stages of production. How can one, while watching this film, not draw a kind of reflexive comparison to Fiercely, the unfunny film-within-a-film? How many times will the audience be subjected to Fiercely’s ridiculous climax for undeservedly long stretches of screen time and not become resentful? Fiercely is the pet project of writer-director Jeremy (Michael Wincott), and stars an under-utilized Sean Penn, whose cameo appearance is lost amid the myriad of stars supporting the film. Jeremy’s ultra-violent opus represents such a removal from what “artistic integrity” usually connotes that his adherence to his vision is an obvious farce. “The dog has to die,” he says of its ending, and he fights the studio tooth and nail to preserve a bloody climactic scene. The humor is definitely on the darker side—the suicide of a popular talent agent is just one of the film’s targets. Stanley Tucci plays Scott, another industry hack with an awful idea for a “florist movie,” and Bruce Willis sends up his on-screen tough guy persona playing himself, only this time sporting a silly beard and a boyish petulance for no apparent reason other than to provide an external struggle for Ben the producer (Robert De Niro). There’s not much happening here thematically, and instead of a film about the difficulties of the modern producer, it involves just minor annoyances. Ben’s relationships with his ex-wife, daughter, and various Hollywood personalities are plagued with petty difficulties, none of which hold any real significance. Everybody seems to be rich and nobody an actual artist. The suicidal agent is the only poor bastard lucky enough to escape this mess of a town. There is a sense, due to some obvious and clumsy dubbed dialogue, that the script has been punched up and lines changed, perhaps in an effort to make it funnier. I can’t help but think it was too little too late. Most of the jokes take far too long to be delivered, most of the characters’ motivations are downright confusing, and, my word, when is somebody going to tell Hollywood that characters aren’t funny just because they’re Jewish?
Jeremy, falling far off the wagon,
fights for his artistic vision against an unrelenting studio exec, but
the fact that Fiercely is completely without merit only
vindicates the studio. Similarly, Bruce’s stubborn refusal to shave,
again in the name of “artistic integrity,” puts the producer and any
other thinker with any common sense in the right. What this kind of
self-serving depiction has done is set up the Hollywood power structure
as the authority on artistic merit. Instead of celebrating the auteurs
and other mavericks of American cinema, What Just Happened
portrays them as kooks, drunks, and impertinent whiners. You can keep
your petty annoyances, Hollywood. It will give you something to work on.
Michael Lee
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