It's too late now. It's too late, after years of punishing hopeful audiences with mediocre tripe; it's just too late for Robert De Niro to trade his aloofness for our forgiveness anymore. We have sat through so much slop— Hide and Seek, 15 minutes, Stardust—just to observe, even for a few moments, Hollywood's most revered colossus emote for us. De Niro's craggy face and cherished conceit once provided even the most loathsome of films with a bit of unearned elegance. But that time is over. De Niro's disintegration has been so protracted and painful to witness, that even when he ends up in decent a movie like What Just Happened, the scent of his decaying legacy permeates and fouls up the whole experience.

What Just Happened is a kicky, though forgettable flick. It's a wry, semi-fictional account of how Hollywood's sausage gets made: the familiar conflict between the ruthless studio jackals, the piss poor screen plays, the maniacal egos, the compromises, the acrimony, the art, the box office etc. For any casual film buff it's a satisfying little treat. For any hardcore De Niro fans left, it will leave you nauseous.

De Niro plays a fretful mega-producer named Ben whose reputation is teetering between prestige and irrelevance —sound familiar? The tipping point comes when Ben produces a disaster action film and forces his lunatic director (the electric Michael Wincott) to edit out some violent scenes that early screen tests deemed as "lame". Throughout the film then there are riotous outbursts from De Niro's corral of directors and actors about their artistic integrity, selling out, and the debasement of their art. But Ben is a supplicant for the studios. He's their bagman: gently but strictly twisting the talents' arm to satisfy box office expectations.

The ensemble cast all play equally odious self-obsessed characters but they bring a gusto and vibrance to their roles, whereas De Niro just yellows and withers on screen. His performance is joyless and woefully removed. And while De Niro's iciness is what has made so many of his performances indelible—the frigidness of characters like Travis Bickle or Jimmy the Jet always melted away into a slow boil, and then erupted into a rueful, magnificent torrent—it's not like that now. There's bitterness to his reserve and hollowness to his anger. His facial ticks show something short of contempt for humiliating himself in second-rate flicks but also lazy resignation.

In a softball satire like What Just Happened, it's difficult to distinguish which aspects of the subject are actually being flayed and which get ridiculed by accident. After all, the constant chatter of selling out and cashing is the sad discussion that has been swirling around De Niro himself of late. Back in April, Francis Ford Coppola called De Niro lazy and unmotivated to do ambitious or challenging work. Then there was the anonymous CAA agent whose vicious tirade against De Niro email was leaked all over Hollywood:

Bobby held us responsible for his own greed, his own avarice, and his own megalomania. And it's just like the studios now ask us: Why should we pay this guy—who doesn't open a movie —the payoff to his production company, just so he can add his name as a producer.

So the jokes aren't funny anymore. As much as director Barry Levinson wants us to chuckle at Bruce Willis' tirades or Sean Penn's need to be edgy, the rot of De Niro's career overpowers all. When De Niro contorts his hounddog face into disapproval over actor's speech about integrity and artistic longevity it's just too alienating to enjoy. Because who better exemplifies the sour downside of artistic longevity than De Niro himself?

Okay, maybe Pacino.