Chris Rock is back in the director's chair for the first time in 12 years. His new film, "Misty Green," follows "Top Five," his romantic comedy, and it is a far darker proposition. NPR's Fresh Air reviewed it this week, with critic-at-large John Powers calling the result high-powered but problematic.
The cast includes Rosalind Eleazar in the title role, along with Adam Driver and Rock himself. Powers says the film is full of energy but goes to bleaker places than viewers may expect, with more pain and nastiness than laughter.
A gifted actress in free fall
Eleazar, known to many from "Slow Horses," plays Misty, an actress who won an Emmy for a show called "The Red Eye" and has since lost her footing. According to Powers, she faces eviction from her luxury apartment and is desperate enough to prepare for an audition for a demeaning part. He notes that she is biracial and no longer young, which makes her a hard sell, and that her own spiky, drug-fueled behavior has already cost her good opportunities.
The people around her offer little relief. Daniel Kaluuya plays her bipolar brother, who keeps leaving his clinic. Topher Grace plays a slippery agent, and Anna Kendrick plays a cynical best friend marrying for money. Driver plays a scuzzy figure with whom Misty trades joyless sex for joyless drugs, even on the eve of the audition that might rescue her.
Rock plays Jordan, a film director who respects Misty's talent even though he once fired her from a big movie after a fight on set. Jordan is about to make a remake of "Dreamgirls." It is already cast, but Misty hopes to land the part Beyoncé played. Tracie Thoms appears as a casting director fed up with Misty, and Powers singles out her performance as shrewd.
Strong filmmaking, thin ideas
Powers sees a step forward in Rock's craft. He says the film bristles with vigor from its opening scene to its final ironic payoff, packed with auditions, car crashes, musical numbers, arrests, private jets and fist fights. He also credits a few big laughs, including a riff on why civil rights movies disappoint.
The ideas are another matter. Powers says Rock gestures at homelessness, racial profiling of Black men, and the industry's racism and sexism, but only gestures. What the film shows, he argues, is so familiar that it reads as old hat. He is harder on its treatment of women: apart from Thoms's casting director, he describes the female characters as dopey, bitter, venal or naive.
Why it matters
The review's strongest praise goes to Eleazar. Powers says that although there have been films about difficult actors, he can't recall one that puts a woman of color at the center of such a thorny, artistic role, and he calls that thrilling. He credits her with filling in the underdeveloped parts of Rock's conception and holding the film up, even as it settles into what he calls a familiar morality tale that seems to love someone else more than its protagonist. In his telling, the film's key line about forgiveness goes to Rock's own character.
The sources do not give a release date or platform for "Misty Green."
Reporting sources: NPR Topics: Culture, “Chris Rock returns to directing with the high-powered, if problematic, 'Misty Green'”.