You wouldn't want to make a steady diet of inside-Hollywood satires ("The Player," "Tropic Thunder"), but Barry Levinson serves a suitably savory morsel with "What Just Happened?," a finely observed and occasionally outright hilarious glimpse at the most treacherous inner workings of Tinseltown.

As gratifying as it always is to laugh at the movie industry's most appalling excesses, the biggest pleasure of "What Just Happened?" is watching Robert De Niro deliver one of his most understated and genuinely affecting performances in recent years. Here he plays a veteran producer named Ben who is juggling two ex-wives, two movies with problems, a midlife crisis, a troubled teenage daughter and various agents, studio executives and apparatchiks who give him no end of tsoris. (Sometimes Yiddish is the only linguistic resort.)

Written by real-life producer Art Linson and based on his memoir, "What Just Happened?" brims with juicy inside jokes and cameos, including Bruce Willis as the apotheosis of the temperamental star; Sean Penn, demanding a private jet to Cannes so he can smoke on the plane; and Robin Wright Penn as Ben's second ex-wife, for whom he harbors unresolved feelings. Sometimes silly, often scathingly funny, "What Just Happened?" finally possesses a winning mix of toughness and heart.

-- Ann Hornaday (Oct. 17, 2008)

Contains profanity, some violent images, sexual content and some drug material.