NYFF Review: Chris Rock’s Misty Green Hatefully and Lazily Chronicles a Downfall

Misty Green is a disaster on all fronts. It’s a film that seems to hate its characters, the audience, and Black cinema in general. It’s a Hollywood satire with no insight. It’s a character study with no character. It’s a drama uninterested in its own stakes. It’s a comedy unconcerned with making us laugh. The longer you watch it, the more it seems to only exist as a platform for writer-director Chris Rock’s most hateful impulses. The titular actress is a cipher, shepherded from scene to scene by plot mechanisms alone. Rosalind Eleazar plays Misty Green with energy and commitment, but the narrative has no real respect for her as a woman. The real star of the film is Rock himself, who plays a hapless director mysteriously named Jordan Green. He even shares his name with Misty’s mentally ill brother, referred to as Jay presumably to lesson confusion. But like most of the problems in the film, this needless misunderstanding can be attributed to Rock’s shocking lack of imagination. Going by Rock’s script, the most important thing to know about Misty Green is that she lets men down.

But who is Misty? The film never tells us, but it does provide some first-draft details. She grew up with a white mother and absent Black father. Her brother Jay (Daniel Kaluuya) isn’t her mother’s son, but she took him in anyway, and the three lived together unhappily. Misty has an Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama for her role in Red Eye, a fictional Shondaland series that used to come on after Scandal in the 2010s. Since then she has been financially supporting her brother while (presumably) spending the rest of her network checks on clothes, shoes, bags, and partying. When we meet her, she’s living in an apartment bought for her by a married man. It’s a year after his death and the widow (Amy Landecker) has come to seize the property. This dilemma gives Misty a ticking clock that she immediately ignores, partying with Zach (Adam Driver) the night before her audition. When she arrives late and unprepared the next morning, she ducks into a bathroom for a bump. 

Making this situation all the more bleak is that Misty seems, at no point, to ever have any fun in her wild life. Everything she does is framed as a form of self-harm. Her only sex scene—with Zach—is passionless, her eyes looking forward as he hammers into her. She’s a lonely, pathetic character for seemingly no other reason than Rock needing her to be. It’s as if she’s based on a woman Rock fell for years ago but never really got to know. Perhaps he, like his director avatar, sees himself as a good man constantly set aside for reasons he’ll never fully understand. Regardless of how little Rock knows Misty, he knows her well enough to believe she should be punished. His film is the chronicle of a downfall unmotivated by any narrative truth beyond the fact that it’s what he wanted to film. 

Throughout Misty Green, people ask Eleazar’s character if she knows any personal details about the people she considers friends. These repeated exchanges are meant to illustrate that Misty is a brat who only cares about herself. She struts through life in sexy clothes, Birkin bag in hand, with big eyes that always seem to be asking for a favor. She drinks only to get drunk. Her energy seems to come solely from cocaine. She smokes weed and cigarettes, rarely eats, and never seems to get enough sleep. The only healthy practice Misty manages to keep up with is going to her local gym with her best friend Naomi (Anna Kendrick). But even that is framed as an extension of Misty’s constant pursuit of unbridled vanity. Rock structures her story as a grim procession of humbling encounters, meant to bring her back down to Earth. It’s made all the more obvious by Rock’s constant onscreen presence, his character functioning as both a love interest and paternal figure. Misty Green is a woman’s story told entirely in a man’s voice, and that voice seems to hate her on a level that feels intensely personal and perverse.

Misty Green has no interest in the plight of Black women in Hollywood or their work, handwaving sexism and racism as if they’re both beside the point. This is also exemplified in the roles we see Misty read for and discuss. She is, for some reason, auditioning for the role played by N’Bushe Wright in the 1994 crime film Fresh. The sides she reads are direct quotes. If it were a reboot, why is the script the same? Later, we see an old clip of Misty reading for Anne Hathaway’s role in The Devil Wears Prada, which seems unrealistic based on her fame level. Throughout the journey we also hear about an ill-fated Cinderella reboot that brings to mind the 1997 version with Brandy Norwood and the late Whitney Houston. Then we hear about Misty being in Shaft—presumably the 2019 version, based on her age. But the biggest indication of Rock’s limited knowledge of recent roles for Black women is the part Misty chases the most throughout the film: Deena in Dreamgirls, last played in the 2006 film by Beyoncé. Though it is normal to reboot a film 20 years later, it seems unlikely that a television actress would be reading for a role previously played by one of the biggest singers on the planet. 

If this suggests nitpicking, the laziness is distracting. The film’s one true invention, Red Eye, is a show no one takes the time to describe. Did Rock choose a title and immediately move on? Misty has an Emmy for playing a popular character, but no one mentions who that character was or even what she did on the show. The film is more concerned with the men in Misty’s life—especially her brother—and the many ways she has let them all down. As Misty’s life implodes around her, Rock pulls focus towards the unhoused residents of Los Angeles. Characters express disgust at having to see them on a constant basis, living in tents and asking for change. These moments, coupled with Misty’s money troubles, seem to function as a narrative threat. It’s as if Rock is saying that holding onto money is everything, and if you lose it, you become a nuisance and drain on society. The ending is especially tasteless in that regard. But perhaps California Governor Gavin Newsom will enjoy it.

Many will laud the work of Eleazar, who simply isn’t given a real character to play here. We never get into Misty’s head beyond flashbacks involving her brother. She often looks at a framed photograph of them with her mother, each close-up emptier than the last. Eleazar moves through every scene stiffly, her clothes fitting perfectly, her hair thick and luminous, her eyes begging for one more shot. But she never seems comfortable in the role, delivering her lines unconvincingly; audition and performance scenes are distinctly unnatural. This becomes especially clear in her scenes with Kendrick, who makes a meal out of a deeply troubled, darkly funny character. As for Kaluuya: he does the best he can with a poorly written role that turns him into a walking plot device. But it’s Rock’s performance as a scumbag deluded enough to think he’s a good guy that truly dooms the film. There is no good here. Misty Green is a black hole.

Misty Green screened at the 64th New York Film Festival and opens in theaters on October 9.