Unfrosted: Pop Tarts Gets the Myth It Almost Desserts

MOVIE INFO:

Michigan, 1964. Kellogg’s and Post, sworn cereal rivals, race to create a pastry that will change the face of breakfast forever. A tale of ambition, betrayal, sugar, and menacing milkmen, Unfrosted stars writer/director Jerry Seinfeld.

REVIEW:

Jerry Seinfeld on the big screen has only played the disembodied voice of an animated bee. In Unfrosted, his first directing effort, Seinfeld plays a highly animated cereal executive, charged with creating what later became known as Pop Tarts. Tony the Tiger; Snap, Crackle and Pop, Green Roosters, and other assorted cartoonish logos seem to be his creative focus. Oddly, no Seinfeld series remakes.

Pop Tarts were invented over four hectic months in 1964. The movie will never win awards for historical accuracy. Its chief blunder features President Kennedy, who was assasinated in 1963, threatening nuclear annihilation if Russia doesn’t tell Cuba to stop selling sugar to Kellogg’s main rival, Post cereals. In this fantasy, Pop Tarts were created from the amalgamated failures of Chef BoyArdee , Tom Carvel– the ice cream king, Harold von Braunhaut– the Sea Monkey marketer, fitness guru Jack Lalanne and Steve Schwinn of the cheap kid‘s bicycle, and the naughty punch card spitting IBM Univac supercomputer. Sienfield’s character, Bob Cabanna is loosely based on Bill Post– the name changed to keep the audience from confusing him as an employee of Marjorie Post (Amy Schumer), and Kellogg’s main cereal rival.

Pop Tarts, the completely self contained portable breakfast product that can be eaten without the need for milk, bowl and spoon, for Seinfeld, is a technological innovation equal to NASA landing men on the moon. Thus the need to steal Donna Stankowski (Melissa McCarthy) the agency’s space age food genius responsible for Tang and other freeze dried heathy but bland space age creations. The faux fruit pastry is just a step up from the leftover thrown away food goo of their best selling concoctions. Garbage dump scavenging children, possibly addicted to the sugar, are a big part of the plot. They function as unpaid comic food advisors and taste testers.

Unfrosted cheerfully throws in any absurdity that might work as a punch line. There are CEO’s portrayed as their corporate logos- a Quaker for Quaker Oats, a fiver star Generel for General Mill. Hugh Grant is Grrreat as a grumpy and rabble rousing Tony the Tiger. Same so for Kyle Mooney, Mikey Day and Drew Tarver as the bickering trio- Snap, Crackle and Pop. King Sugar is portrayed as a Spanish Sugar Drug Lord, called El Sucre, eager for new saccharine addicts. There is a Mafia of milk producers, represented by a smarmy and effective Christian Slater.

Unfrosted is a cheerful and sugary as its junk food creations. Cameos from great comic actors keep it fresh. The jokes spills forth so fast the shtick never gets soggy. It gets full cereal honors.