Jerry Seinfeld’s Netflix-released Unfrosted is as flat and artificially flavored as the Kellog’s Pop-Tarts it purports to praise. However, the movie does come in a colorful, eye-catching box, designed to suggest sugary cheerfulness… and a prize inside.
The prize inside, as hinted in recent headache-inducing interviews by Seinfeld, is that Unfrosted might be a return to some imaginary, “pre-woke” era of comedy, where “people could get away with things.”
False advertising. There’s no “pre-woke” prize, no “getting away with things.” The only thing that Unfrosted gets away with is your stolen time. It’s an inoffensive, perfectly conventional confection that barely bothers to push the tinfoil that conceals the Pop Tart.
It’s idyllic Michigan, in the early ‘60s. Seinfeld (who stars, directs, and co-writes) plays Bob Cabana, the apparent number 2 to Edsel Kellog III (Jim Gaffigan, tolerable), whose breakfast cereal company is on a farcical race with Marjorie Post (Amy Schumer, terrible) to see who comes up with the next thing in snacks. (Side-lined are the Quaker Oats folks, who are too religious to get their hands dirty). There is not much to the plot worth delineating: a ragtag, random team is assembled to engineer the snack; disgruntled cereal-box mascots rise in an insurgency; quick nods to the ‘60s pose as full-bodied jokes. But activating Boomers’ nostalgia glands is a task too easily accomplished with references to Woody Woodpecker and Walter Cronkite and Johnny Carson. Want to make a bell ring? Have Jack McBrayer play the creator of the Schwinn bicycle. Hey, look, a Slinky! Remember those?
Seemingly dozens of comic actors must have jumped at the rare chance of working for a few seconds in Seinfeld’s directorial debut (and likely his directorial finale, considering). Some earn chuckles and serve plot purposes, like Hugh Grant as real-life thespian Thurl Ravenscroft, aka Tony the Tiger, who would rather bring Shakespeare to the Michigan ”Michigoons.” Others earn chuckles but serve no plot points (like the most effective cameo here, which I won’t spoil). Too many do neither of those things. I don’t doubt they all had some fun on the set.
The lukewarm, stale filling at the center of Unfrosted is Jerry Seinfeld himself. His directorial style is that he has none whatsoever. His limited leading-man skills are self-admitted. He can write jokes (some even land!) but he forgets to give his own character any particular CHARACTER, or a stake in the creation of the Pop-Tart. His motivations are throw-away gags: he wants good sod for his lawn (yawn!) and to send his kids to college (it costs almost two hundred dollars!). But we never see those kids, or get any sense that he might care about them- and everything we see suggests that an executive for Kellog’s millionaire organization, can very much afford good colleges and better dirt. It might take ten minutes to rewrite Seinfeld out of this own movie, (50 seconds with AI!) and more effectively center the plot on Gaffigan, who DOES have a character, a motivation, and even a semi-love story…. One that goes nowhere, like most of Unfrosted. It may not be a movie about nothing, but it is a movie about nothing tasty.
Unfrosted will most be remembered for an out-of-touch (or is it savvy?) promotional campaign in which Seinfeld rails against today’s “woke” shows while incongruously praising all the “woke” shows of the ‘70s as examples of great television. (That was different, you see…That was HIS era of “woke.”) In those interviews, he conjures the nebulous demon of a woke mob that has “ruined comedy,” but he never quite specifies what these once-allowed, now-forbidden jokes are. Specificity might undo his premise. When pressured for examples, he vaguely claimed that you can no longer treat the homeless as subhuman. But of course you can! The homeless get treated as subhuman all the time. You just have to call them the “unhoused” now!
In your kindness, remember the man is 70, and has been cruising on post-Seinfeld wealth for a quarter of a century. Nearly literally: his only worthwhile work is a show about him driving around aimlessly with friends, showcasing his $100+ million fleet of collectible cars, and trying to run down the homeless pedestrians that slow down his ride through easy street- a running gag in Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee that, in light of his recent comments, might not be a running gag but just genuine, unscripted contempt for the poor.
HANSEL CASTRO'S HALLUCINA 