“The magic of cereal is that you’re eating and drinking at the same time with one hand” Unfrosted Narration
Unfrosted: The Pop-Tarts Story is vintage Jerry Seinfeld snark: larded with pop culture references including Marilyn Monroe and JFK to the real competition between breakfast cereal giants Kellogg’s and General Mills for domination of kids in their mouths with milk and their heads with on-the-box cartoons. The shelf-stable, heatable, mylar-wrapped tart is the conqueror, even before it is frosted, and Jerry elicits laughs despite the stupid setups—he always has and cared about nothing else.
Jerry has his feature directing debut sillier than even a show on contraceptive sponges or snobby maître-d’s. He stars as the fictional cereal promoter, Bob Cabana, who changes the industry with Pop- Tarts the way William Post helped in 1964. Along the way Jerry and writers Spike Feresten, Andy Robin, and Barry Marder serve the laughs at the expense of NASA’s Tang (Melissa McCarthy underused as Donna Stankowski), Marjorie Post (Any Schumer), and Snap, Crackle & Pop among many other cultural icons of the 60’s.
While it is all about the quick-witted slams such as an addled Walter Cronkite or disoriented Gus Grissom, it doesn’t hit the funny bone the way Mel Brooks or Monty Python so effortlessly did. Yet Unfrosted manages to elicit enough laughs with Jerry’s genius sarcasm to make it a top comedy of 2024.
At 96 minutes, Unfrosted is mercilessly corny, topping everything off with not enough of a new comedian, little Eleanor Sweeny, as a strong-headed taste tester and a funeral in Full Cereal Honors. Seinfeld has been a guru of the common place with arguably the best sitcom in TV history, and in Unfrosted he defrosts his absence with a comedy promising he will improve his directing with time to be ranked favorably with the other bests.
Stupid is as stupid does and nothing is stupid about a billionaire comedian sharing silliness with us as he always has.
Unfrosted
Director: Jerry Seinfeld
Screenplay: Seinfeld, et al.
Cast: Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Grant (Nottiing Hill)
Run Time: 1h 33min
Rating: PG-13
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take (recently listed by Feedspot as two of the ten best NPR Movie Podcasts) out of WCBE 90.5 FM, Columbus, Ohio. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com