There's a moment in Jerry Seinfeld's 2002 documentary Comedian where we see an up-and-coming standup by the name of Orny Adams receiving notes from Seinfeld's close associate, George Shapiro, on his comedy. Adams, portrayed as the heel of the movie against Seinfeld's consummate professional, resists the criticism, insults Shapiro, insists that his jokes are funny the way he wrote them.
I thought of that moment a lot while watching Unfrosted, Seinfeld's goofy supposition about the creation of the Pop Tart. Seinfeld, I assume, thought it was funny the way he wrote it, and I assume no one had the clout to tell him the truth. It is a movie severely in need of a note, and the note should have been "Stop."
Tongue-in-cheek docudramas are in vogue right now: spit into a Roku and you'll hit at least three seriocomic narrations of some innovation or another of varying significance. The iMac. The Blackberry. The Flamin' Hot Cheeto. I vaguely remember a movie from a few years ago about the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper. Not the wiper itself, mind you--someone else did that--but the thing that makes it intermittent.
However saturated the market is, a somewhat ironic retelling of Kellogg's legendary breakfast treat's inception might actually have been an interesting idea, but that's not what Unfrosted is. Instead, director/co-writer/producer/star Seinfeld has spun what are presumably a few true details into a broad comedy of anachronisms, slapstick, and anthropomorphized commercial characters. He populates the movie with almost every comic actor alive. It's less like its docudrama and biopic brethren than it is an overloaded overbudgeted action comedy like The Cannonball Run. And like that movie (and the windshield wiper) its effectiveness is intermittent.
At least one critic has already deemed Unfrosted the worst movie of the century. It isn't, and it's not even the worst of the young year: the aftershock of Matthew Vaughn's dizzying, flavorless and brightly colored Froot Loop of a comedy Argylle still lingers. It would be very difficult with this cast for Unfrosted to come up completely empty. But with this much fruit pectin hurled at the wall, more should have stuck. If it isn't the worst movie of the century, it's bad in a way I never imagined it could be.
Bob Cabana (Seinfeld), a high executive at Kellogg Inc., run by the eponymous Edsel Kellogg (a made-up character played by Jim Gaffigan), happens upon a couple of street urchins in the rival Post company's dumpster. The little rascals are snacking on some jelly from an experimental treat. Cabana tastes it, and it's delicious. Right away he commissions a similar venture from Kellogg, and enlists the help of Donna Stankowski, a NASA technician (also not a real person).
Okay, I thought: he's making a point about how corporations capitalize even on their refuse. That would have been an interesting movie: putting Pop Tarts alongside Bunch'a Crunch, Oreo bits, broken lasagna, and all the other products that amount to packaged garbage. But nope, that's not followed through. In fact, it seems Seinfeld, along with co-writers Spike Feresten, Andy Robin, and Dave Marder, has made every effort to avoid any cultural significance whatsoever. Characters enter the film with only a passing resemblance to the real life figures they represent: Amy Schumer as a cunning Marjorie Post; James Marsden as a bright and buzzy Jack Lalanne; Bobby Moynihan as a Mario-esque Chef Boyardee; Jack McBrayer as a hesitant Steve Schwinn (of the bicycles). References are made to the Cuban Missile Crisis and January 6th, without much substance. I don't know why they choose to portray Walter Cronkite (Kyle Dunnigan) as a hostile drunk, or legendary Tony the Tiger voice Thurl Ravenscroft (Hugh Grant) as a prissy self-centered hack. Someone thought it was funny, I suppose.
A few disparate moments are amusing. I like the two scrappy kids (Bailey Sheetz and Eleanor Sweeney) who keep getting involved in the operations. As two Kellogg employees, Ronny Chieng and Sarah Cooper (remember her?) have some good lines. There's an in-character cameo appearance from Jon Hamm and John Slattery that works because there's some funny writing in it, and Seinfeld & co. don't simply rely on their appearance for a sole laugh. As President Kennedy, Bill Burr breaks through the hacky joke of the situation (JFK likes girls???) and gives an actual good comic performance.
I'd invoke these moments as whispers of what could have been, but to paraphrase Dr. Ian Malcolm, "could" doesn't necessarily mean "should." Unfrosted will leave no cultural footprint, has no social relevance, and has no real reason for existence other than to be funny for 90 minutes, which it mostly is not. Seinfeld, in his recent emergence as an anti-PC activist, has claimed he wanted to make his movie the opposite of Barbie. Mission accomplished, sir.
** out of ****
Note: Orny Adams is still working and he is very funny. Some of his shows are available on YouTube.
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