Jerry Seinfeld’s ‘Unfrosted’ is a star-studded, mostly laughless oddity

The sitcom legend’s directorial debut leans into its ‘60s look and endless cameos- but it’s rarely funny.

(Note: The embargo for this film lifts right now, hence the unusual timing of this newsletter.) 

At age 70, Jerry Seinfeld is making his directorial debut with Unfrosted, a new Netflix film out Friday. And it isn’t just his feature directorial debut. He did not direct Bee Movie, never directed any Seinfeld episodes, and helmed just one of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Aside from that, if IMDB is accurate, Seinfeld’s only directorial credits are a pair of Colin Quinn stand-up specials and one segment of the post-9/11 Concert For New York City special. 

With Unfrosted, therefore, Jerry appears to have taken complete charge, and not just because it’s about his longtime obsession with breakfast foods. The film was written by Seinfeld along with Spike Feresten, Barry Marder, and Andy Robin; Feresten and Robin were Seinfeld writers, and Marder is a comedian who has long opened for Seinfeld.

Unfrosted is set in the early 1960s and has an attractive period look, with lots of Mad Men-style sets and clothes. But aside from that — and his undeniable ability to talk many of his famous friends into cameos — Seinfeld doesn’t show much in his first outing as director. 

For a film starring the world’s most famous comedian and a cast of other top funny people, Unfrosted is almost shockingly unfunny. I only seriously laughed once, at an inspired gag in which a bunch of cereal mascots preside over a ceremonial funeral. But beyond that, a way-too-large percentage of the movie’s laughs are based on the shock reveal of the latest celebrity cameo- the type of humor that tends to work better in SNL cold opens than in feature-length movies. 

Like Air and BlackBerry and Flamin’ Hot, Unfrosted is a corporate origin story, telling the story from 1963 in which Kellogg’s battled with Post over the invention of Pop-Tarts. But because the actual story isn’t all that intriguing, the movie goes with an absurdist, embellished tale, complete with corporate espionage, the involvement of world leaders, and, yes, customed mascots staging a January 6-style insurrection. 

Seinfeld stars in the film as “Robert Cabana,” a character based on the real-life William Post, who worked for Kellogg’s despite his last name. Jerry is less than believable as a mid-century character, as a person from Michigan, as a (presumed) gentile, and as someone who isn’t Jerry Seinfeld. 

Unfrosted primarily focuses on efforts within Kellogg’s to develop the project, which the film treats like the Manhattan Project or the space race, complete with Cold War intrigue. Melissa McCarthy, the main sidekick, is even a NASA veteran. Jim Gaffigan plays the Kellogg side's boss, and Sarah Cooper, who was briefly famous for that TikTok bit where she lip-synched Donald Trump’s speeches, also shows up. 

There’s a “dream team” of ‘60s geniuses, one of whom is Chef Boyardee (Bobby Moynihan), and another of whom is a German (Thomas Lennon) who’s trying to hide his obvious Nazi past, a joke I liked better when Dr. Strangelove did it 60 years ago. (The real guy, Harold von Braunhut, the inventor of the Sea Monkeys, was indeed a noted racist, but he was born in the United States and had nothing to do with the German Nazis. He was even Jewish.) 

Amy Schumer plays Marjorie Meriweather Post, the rival cereal heiress who happened to have built and owned Mar-a-Lago. Post, however, was born in 1887, was in her mid-70s at the time of the film’s events, and probably didn’t look much like Amy Schumer. 

Hugh Grant plays Thurl Ravenscroft, the beautifully named actor who originally played Tony the Tiger, although Ravenscroft was not British. Bill Burr is John F. Kennedy, on the mistaken assumption that all that’s needed for a JFK impression is a Boston accent and a bunch of sex jokes. 

The cameos arrive almost on an every-scene basis. The best is by Peter Dinklage, who shows up for a few minutes and is acting in a different, better movie than every other performer. 

And then, yes, there’s an elaborate parody of January 6. I’m not going to call it offensive because it isn’t really; it’s more that it’s out of place in a movie in which just about every other topical joke is either straight from 1963 or making a goofy commentary on 1963. 

The sad thing is, as a corporate branding exercise, Unfrosted is not even the most interesting one of the last six months involving Pop-Tarts. That would be the dancing PopTart at the Pop-Tart Bowl, who ended up “eaten” by the winning team.

And finally, it’s especially ironic that Seinfeld spent the entire press tour railing against cancel culture and oversensitive comedy audiences- and was doing so in the service of a movie that’s not transgressive or controversial in any way whatsoever.