Unfrosted could’ve been a great comedy. Unfortunately, it comes about 18 months after Weird: The Al Yankovic Story did the same thing and a lot better. It also comes a year after all the biopics about consumer products in 2023 (Tetris, Air Jordans, Beanie Babies, etc.) that a rivalry between Kellogg and Post after a breakfast pastry is ripe for satire. And it could’ve worked had it been handled by a different filmmaker.
However, here, you have to blame Jerry Seinfeld who directed in his debut as well as co-produced, co-wrote and stars in this movie as Robert “Bob” Cabana, a name that is relevant because the real Robert Cabana is a former astronaut and director of the Kennedy Space Center. Both NASA and Kennedy play a part in this movie. Bill Burr is one of many celebrities appearing in cameos as John F. Kennedy. And Melissa McCarthy plays Donna Stankowski who is lured away from NASA by Bob to help him work on the Pop Tart.
Since the movie is set in the early 1960s, there’s a lot of “jokes” that are meant to reference things from that decade such as Bob criticizing that NASA wants to send people to the moon. And in another scene the fictional Edsel Kellogg III (Jim Gaffigan) talks about Vietnam with a happy tone to his voice. The casting of Gaffigan I’m sure was because he famously did a comedy bit about Hot Pockets. Edsel is also infatuated with Marjorie Post (Amy Schumer) head of Post. (She’s real.)
And their offices are literally across the street from each other that they are often looking through binoculars into windows or seeing what’s in the trash. They also employ spies with obvious cameras as janitors that can clearly be seen on cleaning materials. If only the jokes were handled with better precision, this might have been a comical movie. However, there’s not one funny moment in the 80-something minutes of the plot. The credits take up about an additional 10 minutes and watching everyone do silly dances at the end as unfunny goofs play doesn’t work as much as Seinfeld thinks.
The main problem is Seinfeld forgot what Mel Brooks said about comedy and parody – you have to love what you’re making fun of. Seinfeld directs each scene with such a disdain for the subject matter the jokes never do feel funny. It doesn’t help that Bob is such an unlikeable person and you don’t really care for him nor any other characters in the movie. Because the cast is loaded with so many cameos including Christian Slater, Peter Dinklage, Jon Hamm and John Slattery (parodying their Mad Men roles), James Marsden, James McBrayer, Ronnie Chieng, Hugh Grant, Dean Norris, Thomas Lennon, Dan Levy and others, that you never care for the main characters who get lost in the shuffle.
The Muppet movies used to bog their features down with numerous celebrity cameos but it added to the plot. And the cameos didn’t wear out their welcome. There’s a lot of ideas presented here but they never follow through with them. Slater and Dinklage play milkmen who are part of a crime syndicate who don’t want people eating a breakfast that they don’t use milk for. But nothing comes of this. You think it’s going to matter but it doesn’t.
Prior to Unfrosted being released through Netflix earlier this month, Seinfeld went on the defensive saying movies aren’t as good as they used to be. He also criticized audiences and cancel culture. Some people theorized he was doing this because he was anticipating bad reviews which did happen. Unfrosted has 43 percent aggregate on Rotten Tomatoes and 42 percent on Metacritic. It has a 5.5 user rating on http://www.imdb.com. It may just be one of the worst movies of the year. Madame Web is worse only because it was longer. He may win the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 