Unfrosted movie review: Jerry Seinfeld's zany comedy satirizes Netflix's obsession with snackable content | Film review news

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Seinfeld plays Bob Cabana, a Kellogg's employee who learns that Post is working on a goo-filled snack that could disrupt the cereal business. He passes this information on to his boss, Edsel Kellogg III (a bumbling Jim Gaffigan), who immediately approves a dream team to beat Marjorie Post (a conniving Amy Schumer). The film's central gimmick – Seinfeld also serves as co-writer and director – is to closely adapt this competition to the space race or the Manhattan Project.

Max Greenfield and Amy Schumer as in Unfrosted.

For example, much of the first act of the film is dedicated to Bob Oppenheimer himself by assembling a crack team of brilliant minds to support Kellogg's in this race. It's a bizarre premise made even stranger by the presence of dozens of celebrities, appearing in brief cameo appearances as historical figures and, in a few cases, as manifestations of corporate entities. For example, Bob's team consists of Steve Schwinn (the man behind the Schwinn bicycle) and Tom Carvel (the inventor of soft serve), but he also meets the real Chef Boyardee and the Quaker Oats guy. We are not encouraged to ask questions. The team also includes – like the Apollo program and the Manhattan Project – an out-of-control Nazi, played like a child caught in the act by Thomas Lennon. The joke is that no one acknowledges his criminal past, even though he is increasingly pointing it out. “I want to go to Argentina,” he says in one scene.

Speaking of South America, all of the sugar in this crazy world is controlled by a man named El Sucre. El Sucre is obviously (and quite hilariously) modeled on your average drug lord, and after a tense meeting with Bob, agrees to funnel all the sugar he owns to Kellogg's; It is her biggest victory to date. Controlling the flow of sugar in the breakfast industry is like controlling uranium deposits during the nuclear race. Soon politicians intervene. While Bob and the Kellogg's team visit a shabby John F. Kennedy, who is becoming increasingly impatient with them delaying his three-way appointment, Marjorie tries to persuade Nikita Khrushchev, who speaks with a grunt. Updates on the breakfast wars are broadcast on the prime-time news and read by Walter Cronkite in the midst of a mid-life crisis.

The aggressive absurdism of “Unfrosted” is unrelenting, and the experience is not unlike watching a crazy cartoon. But that's exactly the tone Seinfeld and his co-writers are going for. They cram in so many jokes per minute that even if you miss one or two – someone applauds the invention of an artificial sweetener called “Carcin-o-Sweet” – there's always something else to laugh about. Of course, some gags are more elaborate than others. There's a brief punchline about late astronaut Gus Grisholm's remains being mixed with “monkey parts,” a reference to a viral Bill O'Reilly meme and hat tips to not one, but two Francis Ford Coppola films.

Hugh Grant as Thurl in Unfrosted.

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And then there's the climax, which satirizes, of all things, the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, making Unfrosted the second film in as many months to use this latest historical event as a central plot point. And while no one would have expected it, “Unfrosted” has proven to be about as divisive as it is Civil War. However, this film offers more than just its fast-paced gags and a star-studded cast. Not just the food industry, Unfrosted acts as a sly satire on Netflix itself – where else would overqualified celebrities devote their time and energy to empty projects that single-handedly contribute to the decline of good taste while everyone pretends to change? the world?

Unfrosted
director –Jerry Seinfeld
Pour – Jerry Seinfeld, Melissa McCarthy, Amy Schumer, Jim Gaffigan, Hugh Grant
Evaluation – 4/5