There's an unwritten rule in Hollywood when it comes to making parody films, especially if it's in response to something, and sequels: Don't make it out of spite.
Spite movies have a tendency to, to put a fine point on it, blow chunks. When you do something out of “OH YEAH!? WELL, WATCH THIS,” it has a tendency to suck because the focus isn't on the movie's story, jokes, and/or plot. It's main focus is to stick it to the last/a particular movie, so things tend to suffer on the grounds of whoever making it, be it the writer, director, producer, or all of 'em, it's not being made to entertain, it's being made to flip off.
Scary Movie 4 sucked...
Exorcist 2: The Heretic sucked...
Jane Austen's Mafia sucked (I mean, c'mon, the title's joke is because the 90's was good for Jane Austin adaptations, what does that say for the rest of the movie?)
You get the point. So, yeah, you can guess why Jerry Seinfeld's response to Barbie came out as Unfrosted, things got soggy. Hey, the movie does way worse, ok?
Yes, Jerry Seinfeld made his directorial debut on Netflix with what was, by his own admission, a Barbie movie for the dudes because he thinks dudes should have their own version of Barbie. If your two responses are “But isn't Barbie an all dude movie on the grounds that it's about growing up but never forgetting the childhood that made you” or “With cereal?” Congrats! You figured out why this spite movie sucks!
The whole point of a movie like Barbie is the simplest one as movies have done this plot for decades upon decades: Growing up sucks, either enjoy your childhood or never forget what of it shaped you. Big, 17 Again, 13 going on 30, etc, They all have the same moral but approach it in a different way. Why do you think the ending joke in Barbie exists?
When you make something like Unfrosted, you're not focused on that part. The focus is “Hey, why can I make a 60's pop culture movie for dudes if babes got this?” Of course, when the first thought in your head is “Pop Tarts,” you already lost the plot.
And taken a few other things to get a craving for those Pop Tarts, but mainly lost the plot.
So, the movie opens with a runway kid going into a dinner where he meets Jerry Seinfeld's self insert No. Who The Hell Cares At This Point, Bob Cabana. Bob will be our legal substitute for William Post on the grounds that Netflix or Seinfeld never got the legal ok to play William Post's estate. Yes, it's a parody, but Post still has an estate that can sue Seinfeld's ass. Given what's about to happen, I think it's wise both he and Netflix erred on the side of “The family might not like this...”
And before anybody asks, unlike when this happened with Diana: The Musical, I KNOW it's supposed to be a parody...which I'm gonna get the main problem with this out of the way now...there's gonna be only so many times I can write, and you can read, “This is not funny.”
The problem with pointing out a bad comedy is that it boils down to one thing: The reason it sucks is that it's not funny. It's easier to rip to shreds a bad drama, action movie, etc or something where comedy is a sub-genre because those are bad for multiple reasons (Unintentionally funny, overbearing, action movies with no action, predictable mystery, etc). Bad comedy just boils down to one thing, even if it's something like acting or writing as it's connected TO that one thing: It's not funny. It's not impossible to MAKE something like that funny, MST3K did an entire ep with the comedy Catalina Caper, and it turned out to be a classic...except Joel and the others said it was damn near hard to write and rarely tried it again.
Back to the story and when Bob sees the kid is a runaway, they make small talk and it leads to the movie proper as the majority of it is a flashback to explain how the Pop Tart was invented. Ya know, I can't help but think the last time I saw Kellogg in a movie was The Road To Wellville, where it played up how nuts the corn flake inventor (Yes, really, the movie played up the legit insanity of John Harvey Kellogg) for dark humor and laughs...and failed miserably and royally sucked.
We're about to watch a lighter comedy with the Kellogg name in it. I anticipate more blandness than an actual corn flake.
We see Bob get to work and meet his boss, the “Made up relative so the real estate and their lawyers can't sue us over him, either” boss of Kellogg, Edsel (Ha, ha, ha) Kellogg III (Jim Gaffigan) as they talk about the upcoming cereal award, the Bowl & Spoon. Except Bob feels...off...that their neighbors across the street (No, really), Post, might be up to something...which he shrugs off because we got gags to get to!
And warning you right now, do not operate heavy machinery if you watch this movie after seeing said “Gags.” First such said “gag?” Well, turns out Thurl Ravencroft (Hugh Grant) is causing trouble because he just can't find the right way to promote Frosted Flakes, even tells Bob this...until Ravencroft says an idea would be “GRRRRRRRRREAT” and BAM, catchphrase Bob'll take to the lab, which Ravencroft REALLY wants to see...except he's told there's no lab. Also, keep in mind what I just summed up, because it's gonna hurt...
NOW as the next people Bob run into are none other than Snap (Kyle Mooney), Crackle (Mikey Day), and Pop (Drew Traver), and they demand a few things, namely a raise and being able to put out an album. Bob's reply is to say he can replace them with ANY noises and tells them to beat feet. Yes, this implies Snap, Crackle, and Pop are real...shortly after confirming Tony The Tiger is a character played by an actor.
*CRACK*
OW! OW! MY NECK! THE WHIPLASH! OW!
Never mind the fact that this is an uneven form of writing (From a PROFESSIONAL COMEDIAN...or TWO as Spike Feresten co-wrote the screenplay with Seinfeld), but this went from a somewhat grounded parody to a fantasy parody...and it gets even more insane (In a bad way) from here. Now, you can make the excuse that this is all from the kid's POV. The movie establishes that the most of the running time is a flashback told to this kid by Bob. Kid's have wild imaginations, even gets some info wrong, and if they're either born sometime after certain events, to borrow a quote from Todd In The Shadows, “Everything gets put in the past.” Everything gets lumped together as the *BLANK* decade, so it's natural that a kid would make that literal.
Except an ending punchline will prove that moot as it implies, yes, everything I'm about to sum up ACTUALLY HAPPENED.
We then get to the Spoon and Bowel awards, where we meet the head of Post, the 76-year-old Marjorie Post, played by...43-year-old Amy Schemer...
…
…
Ok, if you're expecting the “At least the performance should make up any issues and she can be funny” gag...
These clips explain it all. No, what I wanna point out is that, like Ravencroft, Post is one of the few REAL WORLD characters in this thing that had to change a lot of names and faces so any estates or living people wouldn't serve Seinfeld or Netflix because...well, we'll get to that nugget in a bit when we get to the BIGGER nugget. So, either Revencroft and Post's estates are REALLY laxed on this stuff with humor, or there's some lawsuits that Netflix is REALLY burying.
After seeing that Quaker Oats is ran by real Quakers because Jerry Seinfeld can't resist making a bad joke, we see Kellogg's sweeps the awards and takes every trophy home, except Bob feels that something's off. That Post had something up her sleeve and was smiling less that she was confident that she'd win, and more “Enjoy your last night, boys.”
Or she knows what she'll dump on Netflix after this movie's over...
The next day, Bob sees kids digging in Post's trash and when he asks why they're doing this, it turns out they tossed out some stuff known as “The Goo.” This convinces both Bob and Edsel that Post cracked the one thing Kellogg's has yet to do...THE BREAKFAST PASTRY! After hiring a guy to look into it, they find out that the company swiped THEIR plans to make the pastry and wonder how that happened...
...followed by the gag that nobody in the room noticed the bulky 8 MM camera on the end of the janitor's mop. Ok, that's kinda funny.
Bob then knows it's time to fight back and wants his old no. 2 back in the job with him. The problem is she, Donna “Stan” Stankowski (Mellissa McCarthy) is working at NASA to give the future moon goers food they can actually eat out in space. After a joke that leads to the creation of Tang, the problem...is SOLVED as all Bob has to do is the ol' “C'mon!” bit, complete with the two thinking nobody is REALLY going to the moon.
I mean, we're already gonna parody the moon-landing in this thing, no need to have the ACTUAL thing when we got an unfunny substitute.
After getting the space to work from Edsel, Bob and Stan go to it with a team Stan selected...that we'll find out was on the bottom of the list because who she REALLY wanted got rejected or said no. They then have a press conference that echos the Moon-landing because Seinfeld wanted to stick it to Barbie. Who did she get? Well, in the words of Joe Bob Briggs, “Let's get to them drive-in totals.” We have...
-Fitness guru Jack LaLanne (James Marsden), one of the real world characters in this thing who is brought in to make sure things are healthy...by replacing the tons of sugar with high fructose corn syrup.
-Steve Schwinn (Jack McBrayer), a fictional version of one of the heads of Schwinn that you might know as a bike maker...which he is because he had no clue he got drafted to make a snack for kids.
-Chef Boyardee (Bobby Moynihan), another one of the real world characters, responsible for the line that created the pasta of the same name. He makes the most sense, so his gag is reserved for later...but is still not funny.
-Tom Carvel (Adrian Martinez), another one of the real world characters, the man who gave the world soft serve ice cream and Fudgie The Whale and Cookie Puss...and he's constantly exhausted, sour, and doesn't look happy to be there.
-UNIVAC: IBM's punch chard computer that...is a real asshole and can't stop reading when people are gonna die (Even predicts accurately one person dying during the announcement).
-Harold von Bruhut (Thomas Lennon), another one of the real world characters, the man who created Sea Monkeys...and was a real life white supremacists. Now, that means the jokes lean into that and that's fine, that's expected...but Seinfeld and Feresten take that one extra step that adds an uncomfortable layer and imply that he is not just an escaped Nazi, but an escaped Nazi that participated in the Holocaust.
Yes. Yes, really. In the response to the Barbie movie, we get this gem of a jo---
Guys...what the Hell is this? Look, I get dark humor, and I get that Nazis are part of that dark humor...
But most people will tell ya one thing about dark humor: There IS a line. The bit in RoboCop, for example, where the executive gets shot full of led from a malfunctioning robot and just keeps on going is hilarious for it, going into over the top territory. Now, replace that with an old lady or a kid, and it's no longer funny. Hell, expanding on that, that's why the death of the kid bad guy in RoboCop 2 was treated as a tragedy. Yeah, an evil mafia third-grader is ridiculous and does get some laughs, but a dead kid usually doesn't. So, now we're asked to laugh at the idea that Kellogg's is using a Nazi to make a kids' product.
And before anybody harps on me, I get the joke. NASA used ex-Nazis in their applied sciences and such, so it makes sense for the PARODY of the race to the moon to do the same thing...but then you have to think of the words “Nazi used to make kids' snack.”
Just because you can use a gag doesn't mean you should, and in this case, you REALLY shouldn't.
And case in point, after the press conference is over, Edsel wants to talk about how all of this might piss off the milk mafia! No, not the mafia that owns the milk company, the milk company BEING the mafia. Yeah, according to this movie, it turns out farmers just milked cows for fun and, as part of the “Fun,” would get a kick out of tossing the “White creamy stuff on women.”
RATED PG-13, YOU SAY!?
Did I also mention that this was supposed to be Seinfeld's response to “Boys/Men/Boomers not having their own Barbie?” Except...THEY DID, IT WAS CALLED BARBIE, AND BIG, AND 17 AGAIN (Twice! There was not just the Zac Effron/Mathew Perry one, but a Keannu Reeves/Robert Urich version decades before called Young Again)! Recall one of the problems I said with a spite movie, namely the focus isn't on the humor, it's how to one up a movie you didn't like. It's one thing if it was a horror movie or a drama, that's easy to rip to shreds and funny by accident. When it's a parody, something that's supposed to be funny by default, the jokes get lost as the focus isn't being funny, it's being “FUNNIER THAN,” something that curses spite parodies.
When the comedy focus is just being funny, it flows more naturally, if you happen to be funnier than something else, it comes normally through this. When you're more focused on being better/funnier than what you're spiting, the comedy gets lost as the focus isn't how you'll do the joke or the joke itself, but how the joke will top what came before and the focus isn't in a good way. Something that will be continued driven home as we get MORE of the kind of jokes that Seinfeld says should go into an adult/man's/boomer's version of Barbie.
Which, I remind you, WE ALREADY GOT!
We then go to everybody setting up their respective stations when Ravenscroft and his theater group pops in saying they rented the room for Ravenscroft's version of a classic play. Doesn't matter what the play is, I won't bother to look it up, because the main joke in this thing is Ravenscroft has an ego the size of Mars and actually hates/resents being Tony The Tiger. Boy, if I ever get an estate to handle my legal issues, I hope I don't have people THIS relaxed. I wonder if they're the same people that gave the ok for Diana's musical. Not only are they saying he was an egotistical asshole that only took the job to give cereal “More class,” but he, in reality, actually LOVED playing Tony The Tiger. He even kept playing the role until he died. I know this is a parody but that only goes so far in some areas, why do you think the creator of the Pop Tarts is Bob, the head of Kellogg's is Edsel, and Post is played by, and written to be, a woman several decades younger.
Shortly after this, Post calls a meeting of the cereal families and we see some more of the uneven writing, as once again we see Quaker Oats is owned by a Quaker...but General Mills is owned by...some random dude. No hints he's a general, not even a gag involving him taking command, just some rando business dude. Ya know, if this was from the POV of a kid, I have to question just how much of reality he gets if in his mind, Tony the Tiger and General Mills are normal people, but Snap, Crackle, and Pop and Quaker are taken to the other extreme. Post says they're ready with their pastry and it'll be out there ASAP, causing Bob to tell the team to hurry up!
Eventually, everybody works on something that...isn't breakfast related. Schwinn on a bike because, obvious. LaLane on silver pants to keep is “LaLane” in because the computer made a free balling joke earlier in the movie. Carvel on cakes because, obvious. And eventually, we get to Boyardee and Bruht who make a square pastery...that's living due to how Bruht makes sea monkeys.
On it's own, that last one hurts, but by God, will it hurt even worse later. I'll save a few paragraphs and say yes, this becomes a running bit as the creature gets older and Bruht and Boyardee try to find it. You'll thank me for not being detailed.
Bob tosses everything away when the computer says Post'll win, which is when he encounters the kids trying to find more addictive stuff in garbage bins, this time at Kellogg's and even inspiring the creation of the Rice Krispy Treat.
...the more I sum up this movie, I'm starting to wonder if we mistook “Seinfeld is unfunny” for a trope instead of a warning...
This causes the kids to remark how marshmallows and rice krispies combine two things into one, causing Bob and Stan to combine everybody's ideas into one in a really round about way that I won't summon here on the grounds that I don't wanna be sued for brain damage. During all of this, everybody realizes they need one key thing to make everything work: Lots and lots of sugar. And since sugar is white and powdery, yes, Seinfeld's script goes right to the cocaine joke as they fly down to South America to deal with the guy who supplies the stuff.
Am I gonna mention the guy, the scene, the credits on who's in it? Nope. All the movie has to do is say “They got the white powder,” but instead the we get an unfunny bit where we see the guy who controls it is nuts and kills a ventriloquist over his floor...well, more his dummy. Thank you, *BLEEP* you, NEXT!
Well, after Kellogg's gets the sugar, this alarms the milk mafia to the point where they call forth their finest Christian Slater cameo to remind him milk is good for repairing bones that MYSTERIOUSLY breaks. While he dismisses that, Post heads over to the USSR, where Khrushchev (Dean Norris...speaking Russian gibberish because...reasons...) exchanges the sugar for Post (Or her assistant) giving him a roll in ze hay. Yes, this is supposed to be Jerry Seinfeld's attempt to apply the Barbie idea to not only the space race, but the cold war itself.
Yeah, I have a better chance learning history from a game of BOTH Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors, and that franchise has several games that said at one point, a time portal took everybody and put 'em in a pocket reality to live their own lives for several years. Yes, really. And I get parody, I do, and you can make history funny, it's happened...the problem is that this ISN'T funny. Why is Dean Norris speaking fake Russian? Did we have to have a cocaine joke in something that takes place in the 60's? What's the point of the heads of two companies having a Romeo & Juliet story if it goes nowhere!?
If you're wondering why Seinfeld or his writers didn't think these things, remember, this was a spite movie because grown ass men wanted their own Barbie, so the focus on actual comedy took a backseat to “Beat that OTHER movie.”
Time passes and with both sides getting closer to making the pastry, the milk mafia steps in and takes Bob to their factory where their boss (Peter Dinklige, the ONLY person in this movie that's actually funny) gives the spiel that more or less says if Kellogg's doesn't back off, they'll do...something. To prove they'll do...something, they force Bob to run into where they keep the cows as they keep farting. For a movie that's supposed to make boomers laugh at the cold war, half the gags I type up kinda feels like it was made for 3 to 13-year-olds. After this, JFK (Bill Burr) calls everybody to the White House and tells 'em about Post going all commie for the sugar. Thus, it's now America Vs. Russia for a breakfast pastry!
This should be funny! Reducing the cold war to the snack isle should be hilarious! Symbolism for the real world does work in comedy...only that's when IT ACTUALLY HAS SOMETHING FUNNY!
JFK gets the milk mafia to leave them alone...and we get the implications that he's sleeping with the Double Mint Twins at the same time (Because he might have with Marilyn Monroe, ha, ha, ha...no, that's the joke...something I've seen done funnier in a parody of Nodding Hill made to explain Dr. Evil's origin), so it's time for them to use Schwinn to test the toasting ability of the Pop Tarts. This calls for him to be in a space suit, with oxygen, and in a house full of dummies to test this because space race parody. It works, but because we need to have this be a joke about the space race, Schwinn's hose leaks as a smoking dummy dog...
I...I don't know...
...causes the oxygen to explode, killing him instantly. This leads to a funeral where he's burred with “Cereal honors,” which calls for mascots to pop up, cover his coffin in milk, pour in corn flakes, and stir as Snap, Crackle, and Pop fold a bag that says “Free Prize” like the American flag. For those of you saying this isn't funny and what the Hell is going on, don't worry, you're not alone...HIS WIDOW DOES THE SAME DAMN THING!
One of the reasons a parody like Airplane or Robin Hood: Men In Tights work is that everybody acts like it's the norm at worst, takes it seriously at best. You didn't see the villagers in Men In Tights ask what a movie was, you saw them complain that EVERY Robin Hood movie tends to set their homes on fire. You don't see everybody around the jive talking passengers stare in shock when an old lady translates jive for them, they have a WHOLE COVERSATION IN JIVE. And yes, the joke CAN be called out in a parody, but there has to be one universal rule for that to work, and if I haven't been clear on that, the rule is it HAS TO BE FUNNY. If you're gonna go to the extreme like they did with Barbie, put the pedal to the metal and go in that direction!
And reminder: I didn't see Barbie. Barbie is not the first movie of it's type, but I saw a reverse of this “Joke” in the ads when she kept pointing to the thing that said she'd keep her easy life, and the guru kept saying “No, the hard life one.” THAT'S actually funny.
After seeing most of the groups the team pissed off over making the Pop Tarts watch them at the funeral...which...includes the Russians...but...they were dealing with Post...anyway, the trio find out that JFK is about to start the Bay of Pigs over sugar and...some nukes, I dunno. This causes Edsel to try to break peace with Post...only for that to shatter because, hey, we gotta have the running gag of the living food item thing.
After that goes no where (And a Mad Men cameo that REALLY goes nowhere), we see the mascots get fired for protesting the Pop Tarts, the two kids from the trash bin giving them the name Trip Pop or something, I don't care, I just wanna burn through this thing...but I can't because now we have to talk about the one thing that I know will get a certain group angry...
Jerry Seinfeld wants to use his boomer spite movie...to reference January 6th, 2020. Yeah, Jerry Seinfeld decides his movie about the 60's should have a modern reference to Jan. 6. Again, that's not the issue, satire does this all the time, but the execution on stuff like this has to be done with a def touch as it's a very sensitive subject. So, either the historical people and companies involved with this have a better sense of humor than me or this is an Escape From Tomorrow situation where just stopping it would draw MORE attention to it. And with Ravenscroft dressed as the MAGA shamen, I can only take a guess.
And...that's all he really does with this, recreates images that were on the news. The only funny bit is when the ketchup mascot tries to hold on to the fries and they shout they belong together. This is all to stop a dude name Puntz (Fred Armisen) from giving his approval on the Pop Tarts. And if you remove the n from his name, you get the joke. The painfully unfunny joke. After Puntz lives...down, because up means they tried, to the gag, the mascots accept the loss and word gets sent to Walter Cronkite...
...who gets the name wrong because he was too busy tossing Silly Puddy at the script and it smudged the ink, creating the Pop Tarts name they company rolls with. Again, either REALLY better at this “Humor” thing than me, or really didn't wanna draw attention. The snacks get shipped with the new name, the kids buy 'em and leave Post in the dust, Ravenscroft has to answer for what he did because Jan. 6, Boyardee and Bruhat raise the mutant, LaLane and Carvel open their stores next to each other...
...actually, I wonder how many people would go to the gym if an ice cream store were next door...
...the milk mafia are the guys who killed JFK because he tried to stop them (Oh, after this, I'm gonna watch that ep of Red Dwarf to remind myself how to do this as a comedy right), Post goes on to create, and even the movie has to tell you it's not kidding, Mara La Go. Stan goes on to create granola for the hippie movement, and Bob goes on a talk show...where he's shot by Andy Warhol (Dan Levy) because “Pop Tart” is too much like “Pop Art” and if I sound like I'm rushing this it's because...
I AM! I WANT THIS THING TO END! THERE IS ONLY SO MANY TIMES I CAN GO 'NOT FUNNY' BEFORE THE REVIEW GETS AS MENOTINIUS AS THIS MESS!
When Bob says the packet stopped Andy's bullet, the kid asks what's up with it and the creature when Bob confesses this was all to mess with him as the parents pick up the kid...and I'd be fine with that. Oh, it'd be a lousy movie, it'd still be on here, but it would explain so much. The inconsistencies with the mascots vs. actors? A growing mind that's still trying to process what's real and what's not. Post being decades younger and in a romance plot with a guy name Edsel? Kid's imagination going nuts. The living food thing? Kid trying to spice the story up.
But it doesn't. Just before the kid leaves, the mutant food comes out of Bob's pocket to say goodbye, confirming that everything Bob spewed was 100% real.
Spewed...that's...the perfect way to describe this thing.
“Satire” and “Parody” shouldn't be a blanket excuse for everything I typed up. Jokes still have to make sense, gags still have to work, and writing has to be even. Why would you make Quaker Oats ran by an actual Quaker and not have General Mills be a general? Tony the Tiger's fake, but Snap, Crackle, and Pop are real? Also, again, are the estates and still living people this referenced gonna just ignore this to not draw attention or do they have a better funny bone than me, because half of these portrayals, even for parody, are not flattering.
Save for the racist guy that made Silly Puddy, he always was an asshole according to history.
Again, if this all was just in the kid's head, fine. It'd still be unfunny and uneven, but most of it would get a pass because kid's POV...but that ending. That one bit confirming it wasn't just made everything worse. At the end of the day, this was all just one soggy mess.
FINAL VERDICT: For being undercooked, underdone, and an unfunny mess that can't make up it's mind to be a fantasy like Barbie, or real from a kids' perspective, jokes that make me wonder if the estates of those involved either have a better funny bone than me or if we're looking at an Escape From Tomorrow “Don't call attention” situation, this movie gets a SUPER MEGA DESTRUCTION B-MOVIE BOMB! Not the worst movie I've ever seen, but it's pretty dang close. Now, if you'll excuse me, if toy lovers can have a literal Barbie movie, if boomers who love breakfast can have their own Barbie movie, anime fans can to! Now, how do I apply this to Legend of the Overfiend...
