STORY
In 1964, two rival food manufacturing companies, Kellogg’s and Post, tried to outdo each other to launch a highly-awaited breakfast, a never-heard-before ‘Toaster Pastry‘. Yes, you read that right! ‘Unfrosted‘ is about the birth of the toaster pastry. The film is about the competition for launching the best breakfast product in the cereal market.
KELLOGG’S/POST
Before I jump into my review, I would like to take you in the past and brief you about why Kellogg’s and Post are rivals for more than hundred years in the business.
In the early 1900s, the founder of Post, C. W. Post was accused of stealing several of Kellogg’s recipes. And the varieties Post offered were highly successful, Just like Kellogg’s.
As they competed for decades, Kellogg’s got their chance to produce a better breakfast food than Post when in February 1964, Post announced an upcoming toaster pastry ‘Country Squares‘. The problem was that Post was not ready to produce and distribute for the market shelves. So their announcing it to the world was a massive blunder that allowed Kellogg’s to utilize the time and take the advantage and release the first-ever toaster pastries called Pop-Tarts.
‘Country Squares’ miserably failed in front of Pop-Tarts, so Kellogg’s actually rubbed their success on their face. Most remarkably, C. W. Post’s daughter Marjorie Post was the head of the company that time. So Kellogg’s gave them the history lesson that their pride and legacy was built on stealing what was their’s.
TART & JERRY
This event truly deserved a film or a limited series and I was very excited to know that none other than Jerry Seinfeld was making his live-action as well as directional debut for this. Fully aware of the quality of humor he has written and made us laugh around the world for decades, I was eager to understand how this funny man will sell his jokes based on this story.
So the first glimpse of his venture was when the trailer was released. And when I watched that trailer, I felt this was a lame spoof. Flat jokes, washed-up acts. So I had a bad feeling that ‘Unfrosted’ will not live up to the expectations. So now I have watched it and I guess I was wrong. ‘Unfrosted’ is not a lame spoof at all, it is a disaster.
What went wrong? Execution, that went wrong. The direction and the screenplay were way below-average. A carelessly written story that clearly showed that Jerry’s concentration was to make the audience laugh than sell the narration. Due to this reason, the comic lines turned out to be awful and boring.
Making the film a parody of the true event and keeping it mostly inaccurate was a big mistake. Jerry was either devaluing a great landmark in the American history of cereal breakfasts or struggling to put his situational comedy fit into the continuity. Whoever watches this film will definitely think for once that something is really off about ‘Unfrosted’.
And I would have loved to adding historical accuracies about the film but I decided against it because the film was intentionally made as fictitious.
CASTING
You may say an ensemble casting but for me, ‘Unfrosted’ also suffered with wrong choices starting from Jerry Seinfeld himself. Everyone knows including Jerry himself that he cannot act. In Seinfeld, Jerry was the weakest link whose ass was superbly covered by the other three. This time, there was no force to hide his inability. And then the two leading actresses of the film were Melissa McCarthy and Amy Schumer. Maybe the audience like them but in all honesty, they don’t fall in my radar at all. I also couldn’t buy Bill Burr as JFK. Was he really resembling him with the wig? Was he? Or maybe that was the whole point, to make things look silly.
Also, I feel gutted that none of the Seinfeld biggies showed up. The one who deserved the most for the presence was the now-disgraced actor Michael Richards. This certainly was the platform where Jerry must have brought him back and done the favor as he did before.
CLOSING REMARKS
After watching ‘Unfrosted’ falling apart and viewing Jerry’s jokes struggling to tickle, I begun to analyse Jerry’s well-built legacy. Certainly not insulting or discrediting him as ‘Unfrosted’ will never damage my connection with Seinfeld. But maybe it is time that we recognize Larry David more than Jerry Seinfeld to be the one who gave that show its distinguished rank amongst other shows.
Jerry Seinfeld and ‘Unfrosted’ struggled to please the audience as much as they can. They went extremely soft and focused on entertaining. Consequently, it resulted in a confused story-telling. I am not sure if Jerry will feel regret about returning to the screen but most of the viewers like me will feel utterly disappointed. I certainly didn’t expect the film to bring that Seinfeld magic at all. It is just that the entire construction collapsed to its foundation. The sugar-coating went too far.
RATING 1.5/10
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Sami Naik | Film Critic 