Toronto 2026 Review: MISTY GREEN, Profane Hollywood Satire Is Fitfully Amazing

Chris Rock, as a Hollywood insider kimono-opener, wants to regale us with joyously crass anecdotes about the business' lurid inner workings.

In his telling, everyone is a coke-addled fuck-up cheating on their partners, sleeping around for roles and money, and uninterested in art or progressivism. With Misty Green, he's breathlessly eager to spill the tea, only he can't get out of his way. His profane Hollywood satire needs to compete with issue-based digressions about police brutality, mental illness, and racism, making even the slender 100-minute runtime feel crowded.

For what it is, though, Misty Green is entertaining with memorably vulgar dialogue, and Rock assembles an A-list cast in walk-on roles to play degenerate assholes. The gravy train is up for the titular Misty Green (Rosalind Eleazar), a washed-up has-been who won an Emmy ages ago for her one hit show.

After her sugar daddy dies, his wife Celine (Amy Landecker) barges in to throw her out of her sea-facing apartment, which he was paying for. Celine calls Misty "my husband's whore" and gives her a week to clear out, providing Misty Green with its plot engine. It isn't a plot-based film, though, so Rock instead uses this slender frame to string together a series of episodes about Hollywood's hypocrisy and depravity.

Anna Kendrick turns up as Naomi, Misty's best friend and fellow has-been who has snagged a husband by "making him believe I like cum". In an amusing scene, right before her engagement, Misty has to take Naomi to Planned Parenthood to get an abortion because she's pregnant with another man's child, and Misty chides her, "You like Black dick too much."

Adam Driver plays has-been Zack as a sleazebag pimp and Misty's fuckbuddy. After a drug-fuelled threesome, he tells her, "The only reason we are friends is so that I don't feel I am paying for pussy and you don't feel you are fucking for coke." And then he promptly propositions her to be an escort for a prince in Dubai for $200K.

Elsewhere, Topher Grace plays Misty's shady agent, who cheated on his wife when she was pregnant. But the most significant supporting role is actually played by the Rock himself as something of a love interest for Misty. He's directing a Dreamgirls remake and tantalizingly dangles a role in front of her. She candidly tells him, "I am not going to suck dick to star in Chicago Fire," but might do it for The White Lotus.

Amid all of this is Misty, and to Rock's credit, being a Black filmmaker himself, he doesn't feel the need to soften the edges of Misty. Instead, he presents her as a three-dimensional character, and truth be told, as a bigger fuck-up than any of the supporting cast.

Misty can't find work because she's been fired from productions for assault, and slept around so much that casting her creates complications. When she gets an opportunity to audition, she doesn't prepare and spends the night hooking up with Zack and pounding crack.

In another scene, she escapes a felony conviction for crashing her car under the influence because the doctor had seen her on TV. Eleazar doesn't soften Misty either, and is a magnetic and charismatic performer, especially in her two big singing scenes.

And then there's Daniel Kaluya as Misty's bipolar brother, who seems to exist in a completely different film. Kaluya's subplot centers on all the tangents, and you'd think the film would benefit from excising his narrative. But Rock unfortunately ties it up to Misty's story and the decisions she has to make late in the film. Commentary from Rock on these subjects is valuable, but he might have better served their importance by making a film centered on that rather than shoving them into a Hollywood satire where they feel out of place.

There is a good, condensed film in there somewhere, and maybe the studio could have guided Rock towards it, but for now, you'll need to pick out the candied fruit from the mixed-in salad he presents. Misty Green is not without its pleasures, though, chief among them Rock's delightfully lewd script. The A-list supporting cast has a blast digging into reprehensible archetypes.

Rock, having been in the room where it happens, also portrays LA credibly, pointedly lingering on the consistent homelessness problem. Rock needs discipline as a filmmaker, though his greatest strengths might lie in just being a screenwriter and partnering with a director, like Quentin Tarantino, on his next film.