UNFROSTED (NETFLIX) (2024)

SYNOPSIS: Michigan, 1963. Kellogg's and Post, sworn cereal rivals, race to create a pastry that will change the face of breakfast. 

MOVIE REVIEW:

Unfrosted is a movie about the rivalry between two cereal giants, Kellogg and Post and their race to create a new breakfast product known currently to mankind as Pop-Tarts.

The man behind Unfrosted happens to be stand-up comedian, Jerry Seinfeld who stars, co-wrote and direct the comedy so you kind of expect the comedy element to be good or at least tolerable. Unfortunately, that’s not the case as the final product is soggier than a bowl of overnight cornflakes.

Seinfeld plays Bob Cabana, an executive working at Kellogg and also a close employee to the boss of Kellogg, Edsel Kellogg III (Jim Gaffigan). Cabana’s primary focus is to launch a new product to compete with Marjorie Meriweather Post (Amy Schumer), the cereal heiress who also built and owned the Mar-a-Lago. True fact by the way. So Cabana enlists the help of NASA scientist, Donna Stankowski, (Melissa McCarthy) who in turn hired a bunch of “geniuses” to assist in the project.

Bordering between a fantasy and a satire, there’s maybe some truth and lots of fabrication in this comedy written by Seinfeld and a few of his Seinfeld writers. For a corporate origin story of Pop-Tarts or how it came to be on the shelves of supermarkets, the entire narrative moves like a series of scattershot sketches than a heavily invested retelling of the events.

Not every jokes land in the brief running time of roughly 90 minutes nor the ridiculous introduction of a mutated piece of pastry. The mutiny led by famed mascot, Tony the Tiger (Hugh Grant) is the sole saving grace together with a group of cereal mascots presiding over a funeral which at least makes for a chuckle or two.

However, the best part of Unfrosted happens to be the number of celebrity cameos Seinfeld managed to grab for his directing debut. Mad Men Jon Hamm, Bill Burr as JFK, Peter Dinklage and Christian Slater as villainous milkmen, James Marsden as a fitness guru and plenty more.

Jerry Seinfeld has sadly reached a stage whereby he has nothing else to prove as a performer or as an actor. The 70 year old comedian has reached his peak decades ago and Unfrosted is merely a cartoonish, half-baked story of Pop-Tarts that fails to establish anything worthy except it’s just a lame product out of Seinfeld’s post retirement vanity projects.

MOVIE RATING:

Review by Linus Tee