Review: Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem (2025)

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Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that a 49-minute documentary is superficial, but that doesn’t excuse what a sloppy, shortsighted film Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem is. The new Netflix documentary offers an overview of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s tumultuous mayorship from 2010-2014 and provides less insight than reading Ford’s Wikipedia page would. In fact, it’s a film of almost insulting laziness. It has no interest in Ford, the people who supported him, the city that survived him. Rather, it merely rolls out talking-head interviews and the same archival news clips we’ve all seen before. You’d be better rewatching the late night TV show clips that turned Ford into a punchline when the crack video leaked than listening to the trite observations you get with Mayor of Mayhem.

Now, don’t get me wrong: Rob Ford was a terrible mayor. But he was a successful politician who built up a lot of goodwill with his constituents. I remember a taxi ride with an immigrant cabbie who spoke highly about Ford’s dedication to the people of the city. The fact that he would give out his phone number to anyone who wanted it, and answer the phone when called, was proof of why his particular brand of retail politics connected so well with many citizens of Toronto. Is Mayor of Mayhem interested in any of this? Nope. There’s no nuance here, nor any curiosity about why Ford was such a fascinating figure. Rather, the film simply plays the tabloid hits, like you were scrolling TMZ in 2013: we get Ford’s unlikely winning bid for mayor, his many scandals in office, and his tragic death from cancer.

Despite interviewing Ford’s antagonists at city hall, reporters who broke the crack video story, and close associates, the film seems to have no interest in interrogating anything about Rob Ford, either as a person or a politician. It asks basic questions and gives perfunctory, unsatisfying answers. For instance, we hear that Ford was extremely popular with his constituents, especially in the western ward of Etobicoke, but only get a sense of why during now-Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s eulogy for Rob at the end of the film. We’re told that Ford had reactionary policies, but only hear about two very brief instances of actual policies he put through as mayor, the rest of his political approach dismissed as “archconservative” flimflam. The film asks what his lasting impact is on politics in North America and all we get in response is a flimsy answer about his popularizing fake news-style media reaction prior to Trump—all accompanied by a photo of Rob shaking hands with Trump at some event.

Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem has no interest in its subject and his story as anything other than a curiosity. It’s a perfect example of streaming slop: cynically constructed to get onto Netflix’s Top 10 for a few weeks and then disappear into the void, offering less insight into a controversial and fascinating political figure than countless YouTube videos and editorials we’ve gotten in the past decade. It aims for the most basic, discurious form of documentary entertainment, as if it’s deliberately aiming to be viewed on smartphones during morning commutes or late at night while bottle feeding a newborn (guilty as charged). In some ways, Netflix has revitalized the public interest in documentary storytelling. It’s so disappointing, then, that it so often caters to the lowest common denominator in terms of documentary form and content.

3 out of 10

Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem (2025, USA)

Directed by Shianne Brown.

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