Stream It Or Skip It?

This week on If Chris Farley Was Still Alive He’d Star In The Biopic Theatre is Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem, a chunk of Netflix stuff best described as “doctent.” It’s the latest in the streamer’s increasingly transparently cynical attempt to, apparently, make visual Wikipedia entries for every viral news story of the internet era. In this case, it’s Rob Ford, the one-time mayor of Toronto, who famously was such a party animal, he was caught on video smoking crack. And not just in an I-made-a-dumb-choice-when-I-was-in-college kind of way; the dude was hitting the pipe while in office, and with some street-level gun dealers, to boot. And so the film is essentially 49 minutes of stuff that happened a dozen years ago – stuff that’s nutty enough to warrant a reiteration and some analysis? Maybe, but just maybe.

The Gist: It all began with garbage. Massive piles of stinking rotting raccoon-infested garbage. A strike left piles of it all over Toronto in 2009, opening the door for the election of a mayor who’d make sure no pesky union would get in the way of paying trash collectors a liveable wage. Enter Rob Ford, son of a self-made millionaire businessman, and city councillor who had no use for political correctness or, really, couth of any kind. He couldn’t please his dad by playing football or being competent at business, so please insert a might as well go into politics! joke here. He’s described as “a bit of a loose cannon” (note: understatement) and a “rock star” (note: hyperbole) who endeared himself to constituents by being a hands-on guy who’d “help anybody” (unless they’re a striking garbageman, apparently?). He was a love-him-or-hate-him pol with “right-wing populist positions” who demonized the free press at every available opportunity.

Ford also made Bluto from Animal House look like Holly Hobbie. He looked like he should live in a van down by the river. He looked like his perpetually damp sheen was the product of infinite attempts to keep his pants from falling down – the dude was always glossy and just, you know, wet. He looked like his pores oozed with yesterday’s Taco Bell and 47 cans of Schlitz. He looked like a dumb kid in his mugshot when he was busted for weed possession when he was younger, and still looked like a dumb kid as he maintained his party-animal lifestyle well into adulthood.

But enough about what he looked like. Ford had enough of an everyman hands-on help-the-average-folk persona to get elected as Toronto’s mayor. Then, cue this comment from a talking head: “Scandal flew off Mayor Ford like sweat off a runner.” His malfeasances ranged from off-color public comments to alleged workplace sexual harassment to the revelation that he was caught on video smoking crack. Former staffers and journalists are the doc’s primary commentators on Ford’s time in office, his refusal to resign despite his many troubles, how he was eventually stripped of some of his mayoral power and then the cancer that killed him at age 46.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Trainwreck series launched with The Astroworld Tragedy, about the death of concertgoers during a 2021 Travis Scott performance, and continues over the next few weeks with Poop Cruise, Balloon Boy, The Real Project X and others.

Performance Worth Watching: Ford’s chief of staff, Mark Twohey, offers the honest perspective of a former insider who eventually got fired from his position. He also managed to survive a drunken Ford putting him in a headlock, which surely is no mean feat.

Memorable Dialogue: When Ford was accused of telling a staffer that he wanted to, um, perform oral sex on her, his comments to the press including the following jawdropping statement: “I’m happily married. I have more than enough to eat at home.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Mayor of Mayhem lives up to its rather unforgiving title, invoking the kind of tone that encourages one to go low-road and compare Ford to a maniacal John Belushi movie character. It hones in on the crack-video scandal and the hurricane of controversy surrounding it, including how his popularity with voters never waned despite his blatant impropriety, his constant untruths, his propensity for pointing the finger at the media for reporting on his vast number of scandals. Sound like any other prominent politicians you know? Right. The documentary inevitably, albeit briefly, invokes the name of Donald “Teflon Don” Trump, but it barely has to. In hindsight, Ford’s unsinkability was a prototype for the political morass that has since swallowed us all.

Not that the documentary has much interest in being analytical – or even moderately thoroughly biographical. At 49 minutes, it’s a rare chunk of Netflix docu-content that understays its welcome, and begs for more than just a recounting of events we already know. It nurtures something of a point-and-shake-your-head point-of-view that’s awkwardly offset by its talking heads, who consist more of Ford-sympathetic voices than critical ones. Weirdly, it spends more time setting the record straight for Ford being caught on video yammering away drunkenly in a Jamaican patois than it does telling us whether or not the guy had any children (he did) or getting into his yuckier policy decisions (e.g., dismissing AIDS treatment as something not worthy of public funding).

Despite its slick, moderately schadenfreude-driven gawkworthiness, Mayor of Mayhem is sorely lacking depth and context. It leaves us to make the Trump correlations – and to wonder about multiple unanswered questions: What about his personal life? Any insight on how his wife and kids dealt with him? Where was his father through all this? Was he a fratboy, or did he just act like one? (I really want to know if he was a fratboy: Wikipedia doesn’t mention it.) It’s clear he was an addict, but the film isn’t interested in getting into that – the topic’s too substantive and doesn’t match the sensationalist lookit-the-chubby-guy-sweat tone. It’s obvious the Rob Ford is a tragedy on multiple fronts, personal and political, but the film steadfastly refuses to frame it that way in an apparent attempt to be entertaining. This particular retelling of a wild story is underscored by the sense that we might need catchall recap-docs like this since we so frequently consume news via what we former newsroom dwellers called “incremental reporting” in the internet age; it’s nice to have complete stories all in one place, colored by a distinct point-of-view. This doc slaps together some fantastical facts, calls it a day, and is woefully inexhaustive. 

Our Call: Can a documentary be a true trainwreck if only two train cars are in the pileup? This Trainwreck needs about eight more to be complete. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.