Unfrosted is a thoroughly amiable and goofy comedy about the invention of the Pop Tart.
Taking place in an imaginary 1963, Unfrosted tells the story of the Cereal Wars. Kellog’s and Post are competing for dominance in the kids breakfast food market, dominating the scene while the dour folks at Quaker can only shake their heads in holier-than-thou shame. Bob Cabana (played by the film’s director, Jerry Seinfeld) is a Kellog’s exec who spends his day dealing with pompous cereal mascots (led by a hilarious Hugh Grant) and the somewhat random whims of his boss, Edsel Kellog III (Jim Gaffigan). He dreams of someday having a lawn made out of sod and also having enough money to send his kids to a good college. “Those colleges can cost $200 a year!” he says, at one point.
Life is good until he discovers that Post — headed up by Marjorie Post (Amy Schumer) — is developing a type of new breakfast food that could revolutionize the industry and dethrone Kellog’s as America’s top cereal company. Bob gets Edsel’s permission to try to create something that will beat Post’s new product to the shelves. But first, Bob has to go to NASA and convince brilliant engineer Donna “Stan” Stankowski (Melissa McCarthy) to abandon the moon project and return to Kellog’s. “You know we’re never going to land on the moon,” Bob tells her.
Soon, the entire nation is riveted by the competition between Post and Kellog’s. Walter Cronkite (Kyle Dunnigan) reports on every development, in between complaining about his wife and playing with silly putty. The Russians decide to help Post, leading the world to the brink of nuclear war while President Kennedy (Bill Burr) spends his time with the Doublemint Twins. Harry Friendly (Peter Dinklage), head of the milk syndicate, warns that kids better not stop eating cereal while Bob finds himself being menaced by a sinister milkman (Christian Slater). A German scientist (Thomas Lennon) and Chef Boyardee (Bobby Moynihan) combine a sea monkey with a square of ravioli, leading to a new life form that lives in the Kellog’s ventilation system. Steve Schwinn (Jack McBrayer), the bicycle guy, risks his life to test a prototype while a super computer is shipped to Vietnam and turns into Colonel Kurtz and….
Okay, you’re getting the idea. This is a silly, joke-a-minute film that is in no way meant to be taken seriously. It’s obvious that Seinfeld and his co-writers greatly amused themselves while writing the script and your amusement will depend on whether or not you’re on the same wavelength. I enjoyed the film, because I love history and I love pop culture and I like random homages to other films. Not all of the jokes landed. There’s a lengthy Mad Men parody that, while funny, still feels several years too late. But, for the most part, I enjoyed the amiable goofiness of it all.
Unfrosted is currently getting some savagely negative reviews but that has more to do with Seinfeld’s recent comment that the “extreme left” was ruining comedy. Though most people would probably consider Seinfeld’s comment to be common sense (and would also realize that Seinfeld was condemning the “extreme” as opposed to liberalism in general), the online folks, many of whom were already angry over Seinfeld’s outspoken support of Israel, were scandalized and most mainstream film reviewers today never want to get on the bad side of an online mob, regardless of how annoying that mob may be. (Even a positive review in The Hollywood Reporter contained an odd passage in which the reviewer seemed to beg forgiveness for giving a non-condemnatory review to a film made by someone on the other side.) Of course, there are also some reviewers who are currently overpraising this film as a way to “own the libs.” The fact that a film as silly and inoffensive as this one could suddenly find itself at the center of the culture war tends to prove Seinfeld’s point.
The important thing is that Unfrosted is amusing and, in the end, rather likable. I enjoyed it.
Through the Shattered Lens 