It’s humorous that each of Jerry Seinfeld’s motion pictures have been pegged to such high-concept premises, because the sitcom legend famously constructed his model with a present about nothing. The truth is, that is perhaps the funniest factor about them. First got here 2007’s deeply unusual “Bee Film,” by which Seinfeld — who produced, starred in, and co-wrote the mission — voiced a honeybee who begins getting sizzling for a human florist. Now comes Seinfeld’s directorial debut, a sketchy and surreal enterprise parody that re-imagines the push to invent the Pop-Tart as if the rivalry between Submit and Kellogg’s had been as essential to the way forward for western civilization because the Area Race or the Manhattan Venture.
It’s the proper streaming comedy for anybody who felt that “Oppenheimer” had too many laughs.
Why would an getting old billionaire spend two years of his life — and an ungodly quantity of Netflix’s cash — on a star-studded comedy about scrumptious toaster pastries full of dehydrated meals goo? “Unfrosted” gives 1,000 totally different punchlines, however that’s its solely joke.
And but, the expertise of sitting by way of this movie-shaped miasma of soggy breakfast puns and unhappy superstar cameos all however forces you to grope in the dead of night for a solution to that query, regardless of how rhetorically Seinfeld would possibly ask it. I discovered at the very least two. The primary and least compelling of them is COVID. Shot over the summer season of 2022, “Unfrosted” didn’t start filming till lengthy after the worst of the pandemic was over and Hollywood had began to get again on its ft, however there’s no mistaking that its origins hint again to these stir-crazy days when Zoom helped to facilitate among the most listless comedy that Hollywood has ever conceived (anybody who braved Judd Apatow’s “The Bubble” will acknowledge the indicators).
Seinfeld additionally appears motivated by his nostalgia for the issues that made his life a lot enjoyable as a child within the early Nineteen Sixties (the Slinky, whoopee cushion, and G.I. Joes within the movie’s opening shot precisely tee up a narrative whose framing system finds Seinfeld’s character recounting the glory days of America’s breakfast business to a runaway child at a diner), and perhaps additionally for a newer time when his edgeless type of “what’s the take care of…” humor was the peak of mainstream comedy. “Unfrosted” sprinkles in just a few alternative examples of Seinfeld’s observational schtick (“the magic of cereal is that you just’re consuming and ingesting on the identical time with one hand”), however it largely sees him utilizing the movie’s Boomer milieu as a backdrop for an uninspired mishmash of contrived sight gags and anachronistic cultural references.
All people is aware of that you would by no means invent Pop-Tarts at the moment due to woke, however telling a narrative that’s set in Battle Creek, Michigan circa 1964 permits Seinfeld to filter the current by way of the protection internet of the previous. It’s dangerous sufficient to observe Hugh Grant doing a pale imitation of his “Paddington 2” work as a stuck-up British thespian pressured to play Tony the Tiger on TV, however simply wait till he explicitly invokes the QAnon Shaman in a climactic scene by which fed-up cereal mascots storm the Kellogg’s constructing. It’s dangerous sufficient that Amy Schumer doesn’t have any stable jokes in her position as nepo-CEO Marjorie Submit, who would go on to construct Mar-a-Lago, however downright perverse that her character’s most amusing second riffs on a Invoice O’Reilly freak-out that went viral 16 years in the past (“screw it, we’ll do it uncooked!” she screams within the face of a toaster malfunction).
Seinfeld used to say in his standup that Pop-Tarts can’t go stale as a result of they had been by no means contemporary to start with. As a one-liner, that was kinda humorous. As your complete comedic ethos behind a 90-minute movie, not a lot.
Seinfeld performs fictional Kellogg’s govt Bob Cabana, an concepts man who rolls round Battle Creek just like the Don Draper of mid-century Michigan. Seinfeld’s character would possibly lack the sociopathic attraction, intercourse pest mystique, and laser-sharp writing that made the “Mad Males” protagonist so attention-grabbing, however at the very least he makes up for that by wanting and speaking precisely like Jerry Seinfeld. And by working in an workplace that’s been lovingly designed to seize the identical Herman Miller-esque modernity that carried Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce by way of the ’60s.
If not for its preoccupation with “The Proper Stuff” and its half-hearted efforts to place a “Bizarre”-like spin on the current wave of company biopics (e.g. “Blackberry,” “The Beanie Bubble”), “Unfrosted” might need labored as a devoted spoof of AMC’s iconic drama sequence. The overlap turns into unimaginable to disregard by the top.
Anyway, Bob is the man who writes the stuff on the cereal containers — as soon as a dream job for unathletic, sugar-crazed children throughout this effective nation. When huge boss Edsel Kellogg III (Jim Gaffigan doing his greatest Rip Torn impression) catches wind that Marjorie Submit and her minions are cooking up a revolutionary breakfast pastry at their headquarters instantly throughout the road, it’s Bob who’s tasked with maintaining tempo with Kellogg’s archrival. So he assembles a crack squad of the sharpest minds in America, beginning with NASA scientist Donna Stankowski (Melissa McCarthy, doing Melissa McCarthy issues). Sending folks to the Moon is only a ridiculous pipe dream, however making a means for fruit ooze to outlive on retailer cabinets is a problem worthy of Donna’s genius.
Precisely what bicycle entrepreneur Steve Schwinn (Jack McBrayer), health guru Jack LaLanne (a free-balling James Marsden), Nazi scientist Harold Von Braunhut (Thomas Lennon), ice cream maven Tom Carvel (legendary New York character actor Adrian Martinez), and Chef Boyardee (Bobby Moynihan) will carry to the desk is even more durable to outline, however viewers can take solace in the truth that every of those retro Avengers can have at the very least eight full seconds of display screen time to do it. However, the sentient ravioli that Chef Boyardee creates by injecting stay seahorses into uncooked pasta dough emerges as one thing of a significant character, presumably as a result of Netflix didn’t need to pay it by the day.
Even by the requirements of a slap-happy parody that feels prefer it ought to’ve been a throwaway line on “30 Rock,” “Unfrosted” doesn’t have a lot of a plot. The film’s narrative form adheres to the essential trajectory of bringing a product to market, however its script — which Seinfeld co-wrote with Spike Feresten, Barry Marder, and Andy Robin — is just too hung up on the massive goof of its premise to hassle creating any sense of comedian momentum or establishing intelligent situations of trigger and impact.
Sure, it’s foolish to fake that the (very actual) race to get Pop-Tarts on cabinets was as thrilling and consequential because the race to the Moon (full with mafia-like conferences between “the 5 breakfast households” and frequent cut-aways to Kyle Dunnigan’s Walter Cronkite, who experiences on Kellogg’s newest developments as if he’s protecting the Kennedy assassination), however “Unfrosted” tries 1,000,000 alternative ways of treating the pastry wars like a matter of life and dying as a substitute of deciding on a single good one.
Inevitably, these efforts are inclined to contradict one another in a means that makes all of them a bit much less humorous. Kyle Mooney, Mikey Day, and Drew Tarver as Snap, Crackle, and Pop might need labored in a self-contained “SNL” sketch, however in a film the place Tony the Tiger is a washed up British actor inside a stuffy animal costume — though the Quaker Oats man is simply an precise man — it’s unimaginable to get a learn on the truth of the Rice Krispies mascots. In the event that they’re purported to be the cereal equal of the Monkees, then why do they attend a funeral in character, the place they fill the grave with milk as a substitute of filth? Having the deceased’s confused widow ask what’s happening doesn’t really feel like a part of the joke a lot as an request for forgiveness.
A few of the random, one-scene asides are extra amusing than others. Felix Solis as a Pablo Escobar-like sugar kingpin who’s obsessively preoccupied with the dangerous grouting job round his pool? Sure. Invoice Burr as a sexy JFK who’s hankering for a threesome with the Doublemint Twins? Much less so. The one cameo that Netflix has prohibited critics from making a gift of? Not humorous sufficient to flee a sense of sacrilege. Gaffigan does a commendable job of anchoring the film to a coherent actuality whereas additionally enjoying into its atemporal silliness (“Vietnam?,” he muses whereas studying the newspaper, “that looks like a good suggestion”), however he’s underserved by the flatness of Seinfeld’s path, and by the “weary tour information” vitality his co-star brings to a comedy whose tone and idea each demand a bit extra … snap, crackle, and pop.
All advised, “Unfrosted” is the cinematic equal of a child mixing each cereal from his mother and father’ cabinet into a large salad bowl with the hope {that a} splash of milk will magically mix the varied flavors into one thing palatable. Besides that tends to work out fairly nicely, whereas that is only a moist mess of high-fructose corn syrup with a brand new Meghan Trainor track slapped over the top credit dance-along (an ideal match of music and picture).
It’s a film about so many various issues directly that it involves really feel like a film about nothing, or at the very least it may have if not for the truth that a transparent theme finally emerges from the silence. A theme that appears to be weighing closely on Seinfeld’s thoughts as of late, even when he lets one other communicate the road of dialogue that greatest defines it: “It’s such a tough job, making folks giggle.”
Grade: D
“Unfrosted” will likely be out there to stream on Netflix beginning Friday, Might 3.