Running time: 103 minutes
Starring: Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis, Robin Wright Penn, Stanley Tucci, John Turturro, Kristen Stewart
Rating 4 out of 10
Around ten years ago Robert de Niro teamed up with director Barry Levinson to make Wag the Dog, a biting satire of Hollywood and politics which was well received by critics and audiences alike. Now they are back trying to replicate the success with another look inside Tinseltown. But this time the results are dramatically different. Based on the memoirs of Hollywood producer Art Linson, this is a misanthropic, mean-spirited and charmless affair which stretches credulity and fails miserably to join the ranks of Robert Altman's The Player, a film it clearly aspires to. It's a comedy that's not funny, and a drama that's not involving.
De Niro plays Ben, a formerly successful producer who is down on his luck - his new film, a thriller starring Sean Penn, has had terrible preview reactions. His director is a drug-crazed Englishman (Michael Wincott) and the studio (led by Catherine Keener) is bearing down on him to make changes. His personal life is also a mess: he can't let go of his divorced wife (Robin Wright Penn), whom he suspects of having a relationship with a writer friend (Stanley Tucci), and his teenage daughter may be involved in an unsuitable relationship with an agent.
Things come to a head when the star of his next film (Bruce Willis, here playing a version of himself) refuses to shave off an unsightly beard, and threatens to bring the production down.
Quite aside from the negative feeling this film emits (ok, most people seeing this film will be aware that Hollywood is a tough town, but ...) it's the infrastructure of the piece that is particularly disappointing. The film-within-a-film starring Penn is just not believable; the English director is a ghastly caricature, and the Willis self-parody has an air of desperation about it.
De Niro is watchable - as always - but this continues a run of poor choices he has made in the last few years, with Righteous Kill, Hide and Seek, Godsend and the current example being among the worst films of his epic career. In Hollywood terms it may be time for a reinvention, or at least a new agent.
Paul Hurley
