It’s rare, though not impossible, for great comedians to blossom into brilliant directors. Mike Nichols and Elaine May managed to make this jump half a century ago. More recently, Ben Stiller has shown impressive versatility in the director’s chair.

Chris Rock, alas, has never quite made the leap. He’s tried, of course. But Rock’s work as a writer-director — from the early-aughts flop Head of State (2003) to the fitfully compelling showbiz rom-com Top Five (2014) — has lacked the ingenuity and electrifying thrill that made his stand-up routines so legendary. Rock has taken a break from directing in the 12 years (Jesus, has it been that long?) since Top Five, and now he’s back.

By all early indications, Misty Green seemed primed to be the movie that finally established Rock as a bona fide filmmaker. It’s got a stacked cast that includes A-listers like Adam Driver and Daniel Kaluuya, a star-making lead performance by Rosalind Eleazar (Slow Horses), a juicy premise that taps into a long lineage of meta-Hollywood satires, and the cachet that comes with A24 distribution. And yet Rock’s script is the film’s own worst enemy: a muddled, dated slog that can’t decide if it wants to be a raunchy Hollywood send-up or a heavy-handed commentary on racial profiling and mental illness. It tries, unsuccessfully, to be both. 

The film centers around Misty Green, a once-celebrated TV actress whose career has faded in a haze of booze and self-destruction. She once won an Emmy for starring in a show called The Red Eye, but that was a lifetime ago. Misty — played with verve and mouthy attitude by Eleazar, whose performance is the film’s greatest asset — can still act her ass off, as she reveals during an audition for a Dreamgirls reboot. (“Why are you reading Misty Green?” a younger starlet protests. “Just give her the part, my God!”) But Misty has developed a reputation for erratic and unstable behavior when she’s off-camera. Some years earlier, we learn, she was fired from a Cinderella remake after she assaulted a makeup artist. Hollywood seems to view her as a washed-up cautionary tale. 

When we meet Misty, she’s passed out, make-up smeared and drugs scattered, in her luxury beachfront apartment. Turns out it’s not her apartment — it was informally left to her by her recently deceased sugar daddy, whose widow (Amy Landecker) shows up to demand that Misty move out within a week. This time crunch serves as the film’s primary plot mechanism. (There’s even a narrative device involving an X-days-left meter that flashes onscreen, to juice up some sense of urgency.)

Over the course of that week, a broke Misty scrambles to revive her career, reconnects with acquaintances both personal and professional (there’s not much of a divide there), auditions for said Dreamgirls reboot that’s being helmed by a filmmaker (played by Rock) who’s sympathetic to Misty’s struggles, and tries to figure out how to afford a new apartment.

Eleazar is totally compelling, inhabiting Misty’s fevered desperation and repressed pain, her yearning to prove that she’s more than her fuck-ups. Her character feels most vivid in quiet moments with Rock’s character, a director who seems inclined to give Misty a second chance. (He’s had a bumpy go of it, too — his last movie, starring Nicolas Cage, was apparently a bomb.) Rock gives himself some of the film’s funniest lines, whether riffing on using the N-word at restaurants or pontificating on the meaning of forgiveness.

Misty Green is also good at revealing how past fame can warp and distort your present reality. Moments of recognition can suddenly shift the energy in a scene. “Oh, my God, I remember you!” the disgruntled widow says to Misty, softening her tone and granting her more time to move out of the apartment. Later, as Misty wakes in a hospital room after a car crash, the E.R. doc excitedly hassles her for a selfie. 

But what could have been a potent character study is undermined by heavy-handed detours and capital-S Serious sideplots that seem piped in from a different movie. Daniel Kaluuya portrays Misty’s bipolar brother, whose serious mental-health struggles become an increasingly major piece of the plot, but the performance feels tonally at odds with this movie’s raunchy satire. Rock’s attempts to use Kaluuya’s character to make a statement about racial profiling and policing in Los Angeles are clumsy at best.

Meanwhile, Anna Kendrick, as Misty’s best friend, shows up to give pep talks and a heart-to-heart at an abortion clinic, while Adam Driver, in probably his most low-stakes role of the decade, revels in the sleaziness of a goateed, coke-sniffing actor-turned-pimp, who has a lucrative opportunity for Misty that involves “entertaining” a prince in Dubai. Both are underutilized here, though it’s fun to see Driver lightening up a bit.

Something about Misty Green’s satire feels oddly dated, as though Rock wrote it right after Top Five and then shelved it for a decade. These days, washed-up actresses who need money don’t necessarily need to fly to Dubai — they can just resort to shameless brand partnerships or sponsored Instagram posts. But the movie plays like a throwback in ways both endearing and frustrating.

It’s a throwback to an era when Adam Driver was a supporting actor who showed up for a scene or three and made you wish his character had more of an arc. It’s a throwback to an era when jokes about sugar daddies and actresses sleeping with their agents seemed edgy or funny. And, ultimately, it’s a throwback to an era when the sharpest Hollywood satire arrived in the form of mid-budget dramedy films rather than streaming series like Seth Rogen’s The Studio.

Plenty of questions about the plot occurred to me while watching Misty Green. For instance: How is Misty only being offered “scale plus 10” to star in a seemingly high-profile Dreamgirls reboot? In what universe would a studio I.P. movie pay its star so shoddily? Also, why does Misty’s brother — who we learn is prone to unpredictable outbursts — have a key to her sugar daddy’s apartment? Also, if Nicolas Cage exists in this fictional universe, then does Will Smith also exist, and if so, who did he slap at the 2022 Oscars? (OK, forget that last one.)These nitpicks would be easily forgivable if Misty Green delivered a story worthy of Eleazar’s stirring performance. But I didn’t have the sense that Rock made a showbiz movie because he had something new or interesting to say about the genre. Instead, Misty Green feels like Rock made a showbiz movie because he’s been ensconced in Hollywood for so long that he doesn’t know how to write about anything else.

Misty Green (★★★☆☆) is rated R, and is playing in theaters nationwide. Visit fandango.com.