everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The acting in this movie is really good.

William H. Macy has given a lot of great performances in a lot of great films. Absolutely none of that is apparent in this unfunny, self-absorbed, toothless and tiresome movie. The Deal makes Macy look like some talentless boob who won the lottery and decided to leave his job as an accountant and become a filmmaker. Teamed up with a starkly unattractive Meg Ryan, Macy has created a gigantic turd that should have been left in his toilet bowl and not flung at the public like an angry chimp.The Deal is yet another entry into one of the most putrid genres of modern cinema, "the movie about making movies". It seems as though virtually every single person in Hollywood wants to make one of these films and virtually all of them suck ass. Even the best of these "movies about movies" are rarely more than inside jokes that most people don't get. Most of them are boring and self-indulgent. The worst are physically painful to sit through.Charlie Berns (William H. Macy) is a movie producer so down on his luck he's about to kill himself. Unfortunately for the people watching The Deal, Charlie's suicide is interrupted by his nephew Lionel (Jason Ritter), who has a script about Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone that he wants Charlie to look at. In the first of many things in this story that make little to no sense, the script inspires Charlie to try and put together a deal to produce a 100 million dollar action flick starring megastar Bobby Mason (LL Cool J). Though he encounters some resistance from studio executive Deirdre Hearn (Meg Ryan), Charlie is able to pile up enough BS to get the project approved and rushed into production.As filming begins, it becomes obvious that the movie is going to be a spectacular piece of garbage. Charlie, however, can only focus on trying to get into Deirdre's pants. When Bobby Mason is kidnapped by terrorists and the studio shuts down production, Deirdre and Charlie decide to take the leftover money and make a movie out of Lionel's original script, which had been bastardized beyond recognition to suit the meatheaded Mason's limitations. Can Deirdre and Charlie get this charming and classy film made before the studio figures out what they're up to?I can honestly say that I didn't care a whit about anything or anyone in this story. I didn't care if they made the first crappy film or the second quality film. I didn't care if Charlie and Deirdre got together. I didn't care about them when they got together. And after they inevitably broke up, I didn't care if they got back together. I didn't care if Charlie had a hundred lit bottle rockets shoved up his butt. I didn't care if Deirdre was gang raped by a herd of rhinos. The characters in this film are neither real nor amusing. The plot is schizophrenic. The direction is pedestrian in the sense it tried to cross the street and got run over by a truck. The dialog is stunningly unfunny and most of the acting, especially by the two leads, is the sort of stuff that wouldn't even pass muster at a community theater in a small town of 200 people.Macy seems to have tried to get through his entire performance using only two expressions. I wouldn't be surprised if I found out Meg Ryan was drunk in half her scenes. And in addition to her poor acting, Ryan just looks awful in this film. I don't know if it was bad make up, whatever she's done to her lips or if she's just been too thin for too long, but Ryan appears to have been ridden hard and put away wet. Ryan was a marvelously cute woman and had the sort of attractiveness that should have aged well. In The Deal, she only looks aged.Let me give you a specific example of how terrible this movie is. After Charlie and Deirdre have their predictable onset fling, it's just as predictable they break up when filming is over. But things go past predictable and into lobotomized when Charlie and Deirdre have not one, not two but three goodbye scenes, one right after the other right after the other. Imagine if at the end of Star Wars that after the ceremony where Han and Luke received their medals, they held a second ceremony and gave them another pair of medals. That's what the ending of The Deal is like.I didn't get a single moment or ounce of entertainment out of watching this film. If you want to see William H. Macy's bare behind, it does make two very brief appearances. Beyond that, you'd get more out of a screenful of static than you will out of viewing The Deal.

No, this movie was not vying for any major awards or trying to teach lessons about humanity. But if you want to get a mostly entertaining/mocking look at the making of a movie and the people involved you could do worse. Macy didn't quite pull off his witty, wise, and blithe (?) character but he is still fun. The rest of the cast hold their own as well(I've never seen much of LL but he was good). Along with the over-the-top characters(Soapdish comes to mind) you may enjoy the not so mainstream humor. I did and I'm sure I may have missed some of the jokes. So for a movie that I happened upon while surfing I was satisfied.

It would have been nice if there are other users who commented before me, so that I can just copy paste their comments and edit it, rather than having to write it myself. Haha Kidding, it would not be nice to read comments that you know you've read it somewhere else, makes it like something kinda like deja vu, no ? My point exactly. This film is original, and a refreshing watch, after being fed by the many films Hollywood churned out that more or less have the same storyline. This film is original, one has to watch it to the end (without pressing fast forward button, I might add) and felt good that the ending is good.I enjoyed the film very much, and even though it's not Oscar material, it's undeniably a good film. While I expect there are trolls lurking in the Internet, ready to discredit whatever good comments one make, I do not mind the least bit.Recommended watch, especially to those who want storyline that is different than the usual ones they usually watch on their telly.

In the tradition of Blake Edwards' "SOB"in the 1980s and Tim Robbins' "The Player" in the 90s, now comes William H. Macy's 2008 Hollywood send-up set piece, "The Deal." Despite being saddled with a washed out and forgettable title, this gem is so loaded with wit and side-long winks, you can overlook the mistakes the marketing mavens made — such as deciding not to promote this film's theatrical release. Like Meg Ryan's character, Deidre, says as the movie-within-a-movie wraps: "Even if this goes straight to video, it was worth it." That's for sure.Macy, who co-wrote the screenplay,reserves the film's most memorable lines for his character, the self-destructive schnook with courage and heart of the MGM lion. "Hey, we're in the entertainment business, right? So, I'm entertaining myself!" The Jewish riff is done to a T...as in Tallit and T'fillin. Watching LL Cool J, with a yarmulke on his do-rag spouting Yiddish as he rescues a Torah from an exploding temple caused me to pish myself. The film is populated with the expected coterie of Hollywood archetypes and stereotypes: The elder actor who can't remember lines, the prima dona director, the country club Rabbi, the cut-throat suits, agents and assorted debauched denizens of the film industry. Macy delights in skewering them without a shred of nastiness.The cast is well directed and in top form. No one phoned in a performance on this set. Even Meg Ryan seems to recapture some of her youthful ingenue-ishness making the quirky romance between her character and Macy's totally convincing. Elliot Gould's turn as the Associate Producer / Rabbi is as tasty as cream cheese on a toasted bagel.I haven't laughed out loud this much at a screening since "The Loved One" and that's been a really long time.As they say, You don't have to be Jewish to enjoy "The Deal," but it doesn't hurt.