Misty Green (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)
MISTY GREEN (2026)
Starring Rosalind Eleazar, Adam Driver, Daniel Kaluuya, Anna Kendrick, Topher Grace, Chris Rock, Anthony Anderson, Kelli Garner, Amy Landecker, Rich Sommer, Tracie Thoms, Alexandra Shipp, Ice-T, Busta Rhymes, Necar Zadegan, Carlos Jacott, Yvonne Orji, Nicole Ari Parker, Tom Papa, Spliff Star, Aria Latrice Seymore, Rodney L. Jones III and the voice of Lake Bell.
Screenplay by Chris Rock.
Directed by Chris Rock.
Distributed by A24. 103 minutes. Rated R.
Anyone expecting Chris Rock’s takedown of Hollywood life to be a pointed but loving comedy has got another thing coming. Misty Green connects unexpectedly like the infamous face-slap that the writer/director/star experienced as Oscar host a few years ago. This isn’t a loving look at the foibles of the star-making system, it is a dark, depressing gaze at the human wreckage behind the glamour.
Rock isn’t just skewering the industry itself but the entire Los Angeles lifestyle that feeds it. He takes on the drug culture, the youth obsession, the desperation, the ambivalence to homelessness and hardship, the transactional friendships, the class divides, the “what have you done for me lately?” mindset, the mental and physical costs of trying to stay relevant in a place that spits people out with regularity.
It does not make for comfortable viewing. In fact, it can be rather depressing. I can’t exactly say I liked Misty Green, but Rock does have some sharp and unsettling things to say about his adopted hometown. Too bad he does not seem interested in coming up with answers for the problems; he’s just another one of the showbiz types who is piling on his lead character.
That character is the titular Misty Green – played astoundingly by the relatively unknown British actress Rosalind Eleazar. (Personally, the only thing I had seen her act in previously was the Netflix mini-series adaptation of Harlan Coben’s novel Missing You.) She is very good in this role, even when Misty is stubbornly self-sabotaging and sometimes really hard to sympathize with.
Misty is an aging actress and singer who in the aughts had been an Emmy-winning actress in a popular series called Red Eye. (Beyond the fact that it revolved around an airport and Misty was in it, we are given very little background info on the show.) Nearly 20 years later her career is pretty much at a standstill. She is in a weird netherworld where she is still often recognized (although most people say that it was their parents’ favorite show), but she is still going in for auditions and trying to get nothing roles like a crack addict in a reboot of the 1994 movie Fresh.
In fact, there are lots of reboots in Misty Green – she is also up for her dream role of Deena in a remake of Dreamgirls. But of course, the role goes to a younger actress, and to add insult to injury, the girl can’t sing. And she interrupts Misty’s audition for Fresh, blowing that one too.
Misty lives in a luxury beachfront apartment bought for her by her late, married former-lover. However, as the movie begins, the man’s widow gives her a week to vacate the place which now belongs to the wife. Still, Misty doesn’t do much to find a new home. Instead she does drugs and has a zipless fuck with a sleazy drug-dealer friend (Adam Driver), goes to yoga class with her gold-digging bestie (Anna Kendrick) and lets her bipolar brother (Daniel Kaluuya) move in with her because she can’t afford to keep him in the mental-health clinic.
So you can see, life – or Rock – is just dumping a whole lot of crap on her.
Strangely enough, the character of Misty reminded me of the role played by Rock’s good friend Adam Sandler in the inexplicably acclaimed film Uncut Gems – and I can’t stress how much I hated Uncut Gems. Misty Green is certainly more likable than Howard Ratner in Gems, but they had similar mindsets, always doing the absolute wrong thing at every major turning point in their lives. There is only so long you can watch someone consistently torpedo their lives before you lose all respect for them – or at least become apathetic to their suffering.
Rock keeps stacking indignities and moral horrors around Misty – and around everyone else in the LA area – until the film’s worldview starts to feel less like satire and more like condemnation.
Rock writes a character for himself as potentially Misty’s salvation. He is an old friend and film director who is making the new Dreamgirls. Oddly enough, his name is Jordan Green – the same name as Misty’s brother, lord knows why – although for clarity’s sake the brother is mostly referred to as Jay here.
Jordan (the director, not the brother) had worked with Misty a decade earlier on yet another reboot – this time of Cinderella – but of course Misty let him down. Still, Jordan seems to like Misty (and may have a bit of a crush on her), so he starts spending time with her and goes to bat for her to get the Dreamgirls role when the actress hired has to go to rehab. For his trouble, he has to survive a car crash (with Misty driving stoned) and Misty eventually throws the Dreamgirls project into turmoil.
In Rock’s LA it seems nice guys finish last. Well, actually in this film pretty much everyone finishes last. It is full of shallow people, urban blight, users and people being used. Despite a brief postscript at the end which nods towards a potentially slightly happy ending, the shadows in Rock’s Hollywood become oppressive.
Even the characters who are mostly likable have angles on everything. For example, Kendrick’s bestie, who is pretty open about the fact she is marrying a guy she doesn’t love for the money. Kendrick actually makes the character oddly lovable despite her jaded life choices. Driver’s drug-dealer and sex-trafficker character is suitably ultra-sleazy, but he’s also one of the few people who mostly treats Misty well. Kaluuya does what he can in his mentally unstable role, but the character only seems to exist to ramp up Misty’s desperation.
But whether or not I would want to spend an evening with Misty Green, I have to admit that Eleazar is by far the best part of the movie. It’s the type of performance that should lead to movie stardom if only Misty Green gets enough attention. Sadly, with the cynical darkness which suffuses the film I’m not sure I see it getting that notice, though.
Misty Green is not a film I can say I enjoyed, but I can’t deny that it’s a bold, uncompromising piece of work. Rock has plenty to say about Los Angeles, fame, desperation and the way the industry grinds people down, and he says it loudly, relentlessly and sometimes with a mean‑spirited edge that undercuts his own points. The film can be exhausting and more than a little punishing, but Rosalind Eleazar’s terrific performance gives it a pulse it otherwise might not have. Misty Green may not be for everyone – frankly, it wasn’t really for me – but it’s certainly not forgettable.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2026 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 8, 2026.
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