Run This Town: Rob Ford's story could write itself - unfortunately, this isn't that story

By Jim Slotek

Rating: C-minus

The episode of Toronto politics that gave us Rob Ford has been sussed every which way - as a precursor of national populist politicians like The Donald and BoJo, as suburban revenge, as “anti-PC backlash,” as a crude but lonely underachiever trying to escape his father’s political shadow, etc.

Mena Massoud is starting to reconsider his career path as Rob Ford’s press spokesman.

But did anyone on this, or any other planet, envision it as a story of Millennials trapped in no-win careers?

Read Bonnie Laufer’s Q&A with Run This Town stars Mena Massoud and Nina Dobrev HERE.

Run This Town has been touted as the inevitable Hollywood treatment of the mayor the German press dubbed “Der Crack Bürgermeister.” In fact, “Rob Ford” (as played by Damian Lewis under a ton of badly applied latex that makes him look like a cross between a burn victim and the Austin Powers villain Fat Bastard) is a raging bit-player in a jaw-droppingly badly conceived and tedious story. His only function is to enter a handful of scenes as an unleashed monster, lurching and slurring in angry stupors, grabbing women’s butts and saying the various boorish things he’s famous for saying. It’s the kind of crude caricature that could make even non-Ford-fans feel sorry for the late real guy.

Indeed, it’s more than a half-hour before the infamous mayor makes an appearance (we see his bobble-head doll before we see him).

Instead, the movie opens with about five minutes of footage of real-life Toronto Danforth Councillor Paula Fletcher speechifying at City Hall as opening credits roll (full disclosure, she’s my Councillor and I like her, but she gets about the same screen-time Judi Dench had in Shakespeare in Love that won her an Oscar).

Rest assured, this will be the only time Run This Town and “Oscar” will appear in the same sentence.

This lengthy taste of the real Toronto City Council in action is followed by a lengthy scene in which a bunch of young people, the Mayor’s staff as it turns out, are sitting in empty council chambers playing out the roles of various councillors, anticipating debate positions and generally treating their job with strategic seriousness.

The focus soon pulls in on Ford’s press secretary Kamal (Aladdin’s Mena Massoud) – whom the Boss pointedly and repeatedly addresses as “Camel” - and Kamal’s girlfriend and fellow staffer Ashley (Nina Dobrev), the latter of whom becomes the target of one of Ford’s stupor-driven advances.

I can’t say if Rob Ford really had a gang of barely-out-of-school kids around him. Two people who had the job of mayoral spokesperson, Adrienne Batra and Mark Towhey, both became Toronto Sun editors, and neither are in that age group.

And then there’s the other half of the movie’s Millennial twin-poles, Bram (Ben Platt), a young, eager reporter at the fictional Toronto Record newspaper who’s dismayed to find himself assigned, seemingly permanently, to listicle articles, like finding the city’s best hot dogs. Dismayingly, his boss (Scott Speedman) seems to consider an intern’s success to reflect badly on him. Or something.

And when Bram accidentally gets handed the tip that there’s a video of the Mayor smoking crack, he gets a suspicious side-eye from everyone at the paper.

There was some consternation that a male character was given the “scoop” when, in real life, it was then-Toronto Star reporter Robyn Doolittle who did. For what it’s worth, Run This Town does mention the Toronto Star as a competitor, and it’s clear they’re in the hunt also. (As long as I’m mentioning journalistic inconsistencies, Bram gets a tour of the newspapers presses – something no Toronto Daily still had in 2013, that job having been long farmed out to giant press mills in the suburbs).

So, Run This Town ends up being a story about Millennials finding their backbone and telling their Gen-X and Boomer bosses what’s what (there’s even a lengthy speech that says as much).

I’m not sure why director Ricky Tollman would take a real story that practically writes itself and write something else. It’s hard to follow what he’s trying to say with Run This Town, but it’s said awkwardly, without much regard to reality. The cast are all engaging and terrifically talented. But the story they’re given is a narrative straitjacket that even the best actors couldn’t save.

Run This Town. Written and directed by Ricky Tollman. Starring Mena Massoud, Ben Platt and Damian Lewis. Opens Friday, March 6.