I have to admit I have a special place in my heart for Jerry Seinfeld. He is a Jewish boy from Long Island made good–REALLY good, in fact. I happen to know a few of the numbers better than most as I spent a decent number of years working on projects that helped him pad his ample bank account by a few spare millions, both with his ubiquitous and still-popular eponymous sitcom that’s still getting good numbers after almost 30 years in reruns and his eminently watchable passion project COMEDIANS IN CARS GETTING COFFEE, which was one of the few well-received projects that the once-Sony owned streaming service Crackle put forth in its longer-than-most history. Once my old boss, and Seinfeld’s longtime friend, was unceremoniously relieved of his duties at Sony, Jerry and his team immediately found a path to take the show, as well as the library, to Netflix, where it reached many millions more and helped him achieve favored-nations status with Teddy Bear et al. Plus, though he’s loath to admit it, he spent the first two years of his college life at my alma mater SUNY Oswego, though he graduated from the school nearest to where I came of age, Queens College. I admire his loyalty, at least to an extent.
So I actually anticipated the release of just his second movie, and his first as a director, UNFROSTED, which dropped on Netflix late last night. And I’m of an age that actually remembers when the subject of this movie, Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts, took the world by storm. And there were certainly breadcrumbs–well, tart crumbs at least–that would point to Seinfeld being eminently qualified to tell this story. He has made breakfast cereals a staple of his comedy and many boxes cluttered his kitchen cabinet in his Upper West Side flat. Many of his more memorable scenes featured him digging into a bowl with comedic relish (though I’m pretty sure actual relish stayed in his fridge).
And because he’s Jerry freaking Seinfeld, he has been able to get out there and promote UNFROSTED with equivalent levels of access and ubiquity as Universal has for its theatrically released FALL GUY, which debuts the old-fashioned way in theatres today. And as FOX News’ Lauryn Overhultz observed, that gave him a lane to knock the very art form he is venturing into:
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld admitted the movie business “is over” as he prepares to debut his first feature as a director.
“It was totally new to me,” Seinfeld told GQ of working as a director. “I thought I had done some cool stuff, but it was nothing like the way these people work. They’re so dead serious! They don’t have any idea that the movie business is over. They have no idea.”
He explained that “film doesn’t occupy the pinnacle in the social, cultural hierarchy that it did for most of our lives. When a movie came out, if it was good, we all went to see it. We all discussed it. We quoted lines and scenes we liked. Now we’re walking through a fire hose of water, just trying to see.”
Seinfeld had a few ideas about what might have “replaced” the industry’s spot in the cultural hierarchy. “Depression? Malaise? I would say confusion,” he told the outlet. “Disorientation replaced the movie business. Everyone I know in show business, every day, is going, ‘What’s going on? How do you do this? What are we supposed to do now?’”
Well, Netflix would prefer you just chill and pull out a snack from your own kitchen and bypass the expense and need to wear pants that a theatrical experience involves these days. Which is what I tried to do early today. But I found myself being more in line with those who have to give it an early “rotten” score 0f 4.8/10 on ROTTEN TOMATOES and a tepid 49 out of 100 weighted average on Metacritic.
I actually do get the cultural references and touchpoints that Seinfeld references alternatingly with reverence and snark. One of the kinder reviewers, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER’s Sheri Linden, made special note of that, as well as the potential that UNFROSTED offered, albeit with generational caveats:
If you appreciated Barbie’s eye-popping zaniness but its virtuous speechifying set your teeth on edge, have I got a sugary treat for you. And by “sugary,” I mean empty calories, not saccharine sentimentality…For buffs of any age, Unfrosted abounds in affectionate and jokey movie and TV references. And there are endless nods to ’60s pop culture totems (in the opening minutes alone, Woody Woodpecker, the Slinky and G.I. Joe make fleeting appearances), but whether anyone born after 1963, the year the movie takes place, will get most of them is another question.
But once one’s long-repressed memories of Saturday morning and weekday afternoon commercials are resurrected, the adult in one also hopes that there might have been something a bit more substantial than what we were ultimately fad, all the more discouraging because if you do get the references, it’s clear that Seinfeld’s attention to detail is right up there with anyone who’s made a period piece of any kind of late. If you liked MAD MEN, THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL, or yes, even BARBIE, you appreciate that sort of niggliness. And much like these shows, Seinfeld was able to get a star-studded cast of co-stars and cameos that reads like the guest list of a Saturday Night Live anniversary special.
Except they had far more auspiced writers and more substantial scripts that the toadies that helped Jerry out with his forgettable theatrically released BEE MOVIE of 2007 produced. CNN’s Brian Lowry, also of a demographic cohort that should have loved this, offered his own disappointment:
Jerry Seinfeld waited this long for his directing debut, which makes the choice of “Unfrosted,” a silly lark of a comedy, somewhat perplexing. Far from a passion project, this Netflix film distinctly feels – as one of its writers says in the production notes – like a punchline in search of a movie, built on a soggy parade of sugary cameos that doesn’t provide much snap, crackle and pop. Sharing script credit with a trio of writers (two of them “Seinfeld” alums, as well as collaborators on the animated “Bee Movie”), Seinfeld more than anything seems to have wanted to make a modern-day Marx Brothers movie, where the gags fly fast and furious. That includes plenty of lines made funny by hindsight, like someone reading a newspaper in the early ‘60s and saying, “Vietnam, now that seems like a good idea.”
And if you happen of a generation that can’t quite embrace SEINFELD as reveringly as it has say, FRIENDS, because who in these times actually can grasp why needing a pay phone or fretting about an answering machine tape is actually comedic gold–you know, the one that is as addicted to Netflix as Jerry is to cereal–you were already less inclined to be invested. He hasn’t helped bridge that gap with some of his more politically divisive statements in the midst of his promotional tour, which prompted this scathing take from SF GATE’s Drew Magary:
What’s the deal with Jerry Seinfeld? Why is he so old and pissy? You see this guy complaining about the wokes to the New Yorker? You see this? Sounds like my old man when he drives by a Best Buy they built where his favorite hardware store used to be!
You believe this asshole? I know he was the star of “Seinfeld,” which was a great show back in the 1990s. But why didn’t he leave that decade? Doesn’t he know that we have streaming television now, and that he can watch “South Park” anytime he pleases if he’s worried that people aren’t getting their recommended daily allowance of “Hey! Look at that Black guy!” jokes? Doesn’t he know that Joe Rogan has a podcast where he can make fun of anyone he wants AND tout ginkgo biloba as a cure for HIV? What is this Seinfeld guy, 70 years old? What’s that? He actually IS 70 years old? Well my dad is older than that, and no one comes to arrest him anytime he makes an awkward joke about “the hip-hoppers” at the dinner table! And he makes those jokes a lot! I don’t even think my dad knows what hip-hop is! He might think it’s some kind of footracing league!
Well, Jerry did indeed turn 70 last month. And, in fairness, it’s his contention that UNFROSTED is inspired by slightly more substantial influences, which he confessed to via the Netflix house organ TUDUM and writer John DiLillo:
Jokes aside, the framework of Unfrosted is borrowed from a few beloved classics. “The film that inspired us the most was the Philip Kaufman NASA movie The Right Stuff,” Seinfeld recalled. “That was the basic template. But we stole from a lot of different movies. We stole from The Godfather, we stole from Mad Men, we stole from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. So, when you watch the movie, see if you can count how many movies we ripped off.”
I did. I tried to laugh. Instead, I fell asleep.
I just kinda wish he had even wanted to do something with a bit more teeth and pointedness than this. UNFROSTED lacks both the “six vitamins and iron” that its eventual spokes-appliance Milton the Toaster reminded moms about that justified Pop-Tarts as being “part of a complete breakfast” (thankfully rounded out by orange juice) and the kind of then-current pop culture references that he tapped into what I admit is my favorite of his sitcom’s episodes, the two-part BOYFRIEND that features Mets icon Keith Hernandez and scored a bullseye with its JFK movie nods. There’s no Milton nor Keith to save this.
I probably shouldn’t have expected much. After all, the brand only really took off after the frosted versions were introduced four years later. And as someone who ate far too many of these pastries in his youth, and who occasionally indulges in more self-loathing moments even today, I can assure you that an unfrosted toaster pastry is anything but appetizing.