NOW ON NETFLIX! Jerry Seinfeld recently said that the “extreme left and PC crap” has hurt comedy. You know what help hurt comedy? Bad comedy. Let’s talk about Seinfeld’s Netflix directorial debut.
Unfrosted is the not-so-true origin of the Pop Tart. Bob Cabana (Jerry Seinfeld) is the executive marketing director at Kellogg’s and works directly under it’s current owner, Edsel Kellogg III (Jim Gaffigan).
As Kellogg’s celebrates a banner year in the cereal game, their rival, Marjorie Post (Amy Schumer) of Post fame, has stolen the formula for a fruity pastry that can be cooked in a toaster from Kellogg. Now, Post and Kellogg are in a race to get their fruit-filled pastry first to market.
Cabana needs the help of his former snack-science partner, Donna Standkowski (Melissa McCarthy), to perfect the confection. Along the way, Bob and Donna get involved with a sugar cabal, the milk mafia, and a mascot strike led by Tony the Tiger himself, Thurl Ravenscroft (Hugh Grant).
Unfrosted is dumb. Not only is it dumb, it’s stupid. It commits the sin of being a comedy that thinks its funny. The film goes wrong in so many ways.
“…Post and Kellogg are in a race to get their fruit-filled pastry first to market.”
The one highlight of the film is that it’s loaded with famous celebrities and comedians. The fun is in spotting them and then trying to remember where you’ve seen that person before. I loved seeing current and past SNL cast members, including Mikey Day, Kyle Mooney, Beck Bennett, and even Sasheer Zamata. It’s like a game of Where’s Waldo but with dozens of Waldos.
One frustration I had is that the majority of the jokes and references are dated. In fact, all the jokes are older than me. We’re brought back to the 50s and 60s and unless your a fan of the 50s and 60s, you’ll get lost or forget why these references were so important.
Also, rather than tell the actual tale of the Pop Tart, we’re given a heavily fictionalized tale of the Pop Tart. As an audience, there’s nothing authentic to latch onto that may or may not interest you in the history of cereals because nothing is true. The beloved Thurl Ravenscroft is somewhat of a villain…opposite of the real Ravenscroft.
The true crime of Unfrosted is that it’s simply not funny. The film is essentially Jerry Seinfeld’s stand-up act written in the form of a fictionalized true story. What do I mean? One of the hallmarks of Seinfeld’s stand-up is his use of words. Some words are funnier than others, such as “squeegee,” “blob,” “fusilli,” and “nougat.” In Unfrosted, the word of the day is “dextrose.” This works in a stand-up routine but not in comedy dialogue, and there are just so many of these quirky words that you know it’s all rammed down our throats from Jerry himself.
Unfrosted is a stupid and silly story that will go over the heads of the younger set and make the older set strain to remember why it was funny back in the day. Spotting celebrity cameos of comedians we both love and hate is the only fun part of the film.
"…Unfrosted is dumb. Not only is it dumb, it's stupid."
