Name: Misty Green Review: Chris Rock Returns to the Director’s Chair With a Familiar Hollywood Drama
Item: Misty Green
Rating: 5
Author: Eli Brau

It’s ironic that the A24-backed Misty Green was pulled from theaters barely a month into its run, after a porous financial performance and little word of mouth to speak of, only to be quietly placed on Netflix in unorthodox fashion on a Monday morning. It’s ironic because, like much of Netflix’s original material, it looks and feels like a sanitized version of the underbelly it’s really trying to dig into.

To be clear, Misty Green isn’t technically a Netflix original. But one of its lead producers, Peter Rice, now operates as Netflix’s Chief Content Officer, so the streaming detour isn’t all that surprising. Hollywood showbiz is a tough, nasty place to break into and stay relevant in, and no one likes to tell you that more than the stars who inhabit it.

Which should make it no surprise that Misty Green is written and directed by (and co-stars) comedian Chris Rock. He hasn’t directed a feature since 2014’s Top Five, and he’s back again with a self-reflexive film about the life of a fading Hollywood performer.

This time, we see it through the lens of the titular actress, long after her initial Hollywood breakthrough and struggling to make ends meet. The film opens with her being evicted from the home she’s been living in by the widow of the man who’d been cheating on his wife with Misty. From there, we watch her try time and time again to land her big comeback gig.

Misty is played by Rosalind Eleazar, who’s given the runway to make the film her own. Every frame seems to linger on her as the walls close in. Her place to stay is suddenly taken away, and her financial situation keeps getting worse.

Along the way, we meet the caricatures of Hollywood figures who’ve weaved in and out of her life. There are friendly directors like Jordan (Rock), friendly but drugged-out directors like Zach (Adam Driver), and Misty’s assorted talent agents and friends. Driver turns in another supporting performance that feels singular and indelible, though he mostly hovers around the periphery of the film’s main events.

It’s a relatively starry cast for something that feels this small-scaled. That includes a rare Daniel Kaluuya performance as Misty’s ex-con brother, who’s struggling with a severe bipolar diagnosis, with Topher Grace and Anna Kendrick rounding out the cast.

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Misty Green isn’t bad. But it arrives on the heels of self-reflexive Hollywood projects that cut much deeper than this one does, or at least leave a mark by venturing into a more ludicrous tone. When I say it feels like a Netflix-sanitized version of a Hollywood movie, it cuts out the ridiculous, anxiety-inducing, larger-than-life moments of movies about performance like Babylon or Boogie Nights. It’s missing the wisecracking spontaneity of The Disaster Artist or Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, the picture-perfect set design and cinematography of La La Land, and the brooding nastiness of David Lynch’s Hollywood-set films.

For a film directed by a world-famous comedian, Misty Green is surprisingly light on personality, and it lacks a clever edge or angle. Eleazar gives it everything she has. The movie around her just never matches her.