Seinfeld really couldn’t be more funny

Billionaire comedian Jerry Seinfeld returns to starring role (and the celebration of breakfast cereal) with directorial debut Unfrosted: The Pop-Tart Story. It’s seemingly innocuous and doesn’t engage in nearly enough of its scattered jokes, says Steve Newall.

Jerry Seinfeld was recently dubbed “the scholar of comedy” by a New Yorker feature – likely thanks to comparisons between the comic and Roman emperor-cum-philosopher Marcus Aurelius. However, that is not what the interview is known for. Instead, it would be Seinfeld’s infamously detached whining about the toll taken on comedy by “the far left and PC nonsense, and people who worry so much about offending other people.”

As part of the promotional cycle for his Netflix film Unfrosted: The Pop-Tart Story, it certainly generated clicks and popular takes, so you could be forgiven for thinking it was a piece of cynical attention-seeking or trolling. But putting aside all the evidence that contradicts his thesis (Always Sunny etc.), and looking solely at Unfrosted, Seinfeld isn’t entirely wrong. The evidence suggests he really is can not stop being funny.

There are a lot of jokes thrown around, but Seinfeld’s wacky take on the origins of the Pop-Tart breakfast snack delivers far too little. Sometimes Unfrosted seems to think it’s a plane! with its frequency of jokes, but manages to infuse the catchy tone of Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker parodies with the inert, half-hearted comedy of Sandler-and-friends Happy Madison productions. Time passes differently in those films. Here I looked at my watch to see how much longer I had to last, but discovered that I was only half an hour away…

Always far from the strongest performer in his own film ensembles, Seinfeld’s starring role in his own film feels as disconnected and unfocused as the picture itself. He plays a Kellogg marketing executive who is part of a team (which also includes Jim Gaffigan and Melissa McCarthy, who do their valiant effort with lukewarm material) that races to beat cereal company rival Post to market with a line of toaster pastries from the supermarket. What emerges from this premise somehow manages to be smug and unsure of itself at the same time. It’s a sort of parody of a space race drama, but one that’s blandly innocuous and doesn’t commit to enough of its scattered gags.

Hugh Grant is the most prominent of a few notable exceptions, radiating commitment as a Shakespearean actor stuck in the doldrums playing cereal mascot Tony the Tiger. As evidenced by other recent efforts, he’s in full scenery-chewing mode here, providing some much-needed energy, bringing otherwise dead spots of the picture to life.

Grant’s pompous, real-life Brit Thurl Ravenscroft also becomes a key character in one of the comic sequences that Unfrosted doesn’t commit to often enough. The film is largely content with lazy jokes, one-liners, or cultural references, but rarely really leans into a scene where it can take full advantage of the absurdity. So when Tony the Tiger goes from Frosties ambassador to a certain shamanic insurgent, leading dozens of mascots in a January 6-like uprising, it’s a welcome sight (if it’s too little, it’s too late).

Besides a few short-lived funny cameos that I won’t spoil, some of the few other highlights include Kyle Dunnigan (who successfully channels Lloyd Bridges and Robert Stack of Airplane! in his portrayal of Walter Cronkite) and Thomas Lennon in one of a few running gags that work (as white supremacist and Sea Monkey “inventor” Harold von Braunhut – also a real person). The constant references to Von Braunhut’s Nazism have a venomous quality that the film could have used elsewhere.

Most of the time, though, people don’t seem to be having much fun on screen, and that translates to the viewer. There’s little energy or atmosphere to energize us, which is a terrible addition to an underwritten script. Elsewhere in his interview with the New Yorker, Seinfeld talked about the rigor required when creating comedy, but his assessment of what we like to watch feels as off-kilter as his reading of today’s comedic and cultural landscapes. With just a few genuine laughs, a few chuckles and 90% of the so-called jokes floating by without any impact, Unfrosted might as well be called Unfunny.