Perhaps, like Jerry Seinfeld, you too have spent hours wondering: What’s the deal with Pop Tarts?! Is it a breakfast item or just undercover dessert? How do they get all that delicious fruity goo inside the tiny squares? Is there a goo gun? Who came up with the idea of putting “docker holes” on the top to keep the toaster steam out? Was it Bob from Engineering? And why the frosting, people? Was there not enough sugar already in there already? I wanna know!
Seinfeld has, of course, been known for decades as a world-renowned scholar on breakfast; in his spare time, he’s dabbled in stand-up comedy and once had a TV show. Now, he’s finally put his obsession with the most important meal of the day to good use. Unfrosted dives deep into the origin story of one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century: the Pop Tart. Specifically, the knock-down, drag-out showdown between two heavy hitters in the cereal racket circa 1963, as they race to perfect the ultimate on-the-go flavor-filled snack. An alternate title might be: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Pop Tarts, But Were Too Afraid/Distracted by Important Things to Ask. Another option: Is Every Major Funny Person in Jerry’s Rolodex in This Thing?
Seriously, say what you will about Seinfeld’s Netflix-sponsored directorial debut — in terms of casting, it’s the Oppenheimer of food-based comedies. (Please do not use this as a pull quote. We will sue.) A partial list of costars gracing the screen besides the auteur himself includes Jim Gaffigan, Amy Schumer, Melissa McCarthy, Hugh Grant, Sarah Cooper, one-eighth of the SNL cast over the past eight years, James Mardsen, Bill Burr (as JFK), Tony Hale, George Freakin’ Wallace, Fred Armisen, Thomas Lennon, Andy Daly, Earthquake and Cedric the Entertainer. Some play major roles, while others show up for a punch line or two then waltz off into the Space Age distance. Whether Seinfeld & Co. are trying to break some sort It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World record here is unknown. What is obvious is that a lot of favors have been called in, all in the name of supporting the filmmaker’s vision of a bygone era, in which children were free to start the day with the maximum amount of glucose coursing through their tiny veins. That, and the fact that quantity doesn’t necessarily ensure quality.
What’s also apparent is that Unfrosted is designed from the get-go to be a boomer’s nostalgic wet dream. The very first shot involves a close-up of a vintage G.I. Joe doll, a rubber ball, a Woody Woodpecker comic, baseball cards, Bazooka gum, a Slinkee, a Whoopee Cushion and a pocket knife — it’s only one Davy Crockett’s cap away from being a Smithsonian-level exhibit of early ’60s boys’ playground survival kits. The movie’s already priming you for a “Hey, remember these?” showcase, which is one promise it will definitely make good on. You immediately sense that you’re walking down Seinfeld’s personal memory lane, touring a sort of pop-culture wax museum with a manic pulse. Get used to that feeling.
Seinfeld himself plays Bob Cabana, a bigwig exec at Kellogg’s HQ in Battle Creek, Michigan. He and his boss, Edsel Kellogg III (Gaffigan), are basking in the glow of being the No. 1 Provider of America’s Breakfast Cereals. Their main competition, Post — led by Marjorie Post (Schumer) and her loyal toadie, Rick Ludwin (New Girl‘s Max Greenfield) — are bitter over being perpetually stuck in second place. They happen to have an ace up their sleeve, however, in the form of a new product that they’re sure will take the market by storm. Cabana soon gets wind of this potential gamechanger, courtesy of two kids (Bailey Sheetz and Eleanor Sweeney) scouring Post’s dumpsters for “fruitiferous goo.” It’s “transportable, possibly heatable,” he informs his boss. “It may even be nutritious?”
This “country square” snack also bears a strong resemblance to a project Cabana was once working on and abandoned, which suggests that someone is leaking company secrets. He quickly recruits his old partner in crime, Donna Stankowski (McCarthy), who’s working at NASA. After convincing her that men will never be able to go to the moon and her smarts are better suited to pastries, Donna joins Kelloggs’ heroes. Also down for the cause is an elite group of geniuses such as Harold Von Braunhut (a.k.a. the inventor of Sea Monkeys), Jack Lalanne, Tom Carvel, Steve Schwinn and Chef Boyardee.
Did reading that roll call of old-school product mascots and entrepreneurs crack you up on its own? Then you may, in fact, have a ball watching what Unfrosted is cooking up here. He and his cowriters Spike Feresten, Andy Robin and Barry Marder keep throwing all types of funny-bone attack modes at you, from the typical “didja ever notice?” observational humor that’s been Seinfeld’s shtick-in-trade to Zucker-brothers’ ridiculousness. (No one’s sure how Post had discovered Cabana’s secret project, as they dismiss a janitor with a conspicuously large camera on his vacuum cleaner.) Two famous TV actors drop by to parody two very recognizable TV characters. There are conceptually highbrow crusts, i.e. a shadowy organization of milk men working for the Dairy Industrial Complex, that exist only to house lowbrow filling, i.e. a gauntlet of cow farts. How about an elaborate, extended Jan. 6th insurrection joke, which, y’know — hilarious. When all else fails, drop some weak-tea irony (“Vietnam, that seems like a good idea!”).
It’s like that old chestnut about how if you don’t like the weather in Texas, just wait five minutes. If the manic procession of goofs, gags and aggressive rib nudges don’t leave you in stitches, wait a 0.5 seconds and maybe something will inspire you to laugh. It’s impossible to assemble this much comedic talent and not get a bullseye occasionally, yet the hit-to-miss ratio favors the latter way too much. The idea of doing The Right Stuff of food stuff and treating the rise and fall of empires over a breakfast treat as U.S. History 101 is, on paper, a well-balanced meal. Onscreen, it comes off as a lot of half-baked self-satisfaction that leaves you woozy from the sugar crash.
