#55: Unfrosted

Release Date: April 30th, 2024

Format: Streaming (Netflix)

Written by: Spike Feresten, Barry Marder, Andy Robin, and Jerry Seinfeld

Directed by: Jerry Seinfeld

2 Stars

A $70 million movie about Pop-Tarts. Is that inherently funny? Kinda.

One of my favorite things about Seinfeld is that beneath his facade, he really does have a complete disdain for the human race. That often gets overlooked because he’s not an angry comic, but it’s true. As a collective whole, I get this feeling that Seinfeld regards humans as shallow creatures deserving of mockery.  

I highly recommend a video that’s on YouTube where Jerry is accepting some sort of award. The video is titled, “All awards are stupid,” and in his acceptance speech, Jerry more or less says exactly that. His belief is that awards are for idiot hotel managers, moronic real estate mortgage brokers, and con man car salesmen. He then says that although he is honored to receive this award they’re giving him, it’s still a stupid waste of time.

Jerry also has no regard for movies. He has a stand up bit about how he can never follow a plot and is constantly asking the person sitting next to him what is going on in the movie. You see this cinematic ambivalence in the show Seinfeld as well. There’s a recurring gag in the series about the main characters constantly going to the movies, which I’m convinced is only for Jerry and Larry David to come up with the stupidest fake movie titles they can think of (some of my favorites: Chunnel, Flaming Globes of Sigmund, Prognosis Negative, Sack Lunch, and, of course, Death Blow). 

So what we have here is a writer/director who doesn’t regard movies as a serious art form and doesn’t like people, and you can see his disdain for it all in Unfrosted.  It’s a silly movie starring insignificant beings, from corporate yes men to actors to NASA scientists to politicians to journalists. Just a bunch of Morons. Dopes. Cowards. 

But the important question is, is the movie any good? Is it funny?

It’s fine. I enjoyed myself. You can see the late Seinfeld, post-Larry David qualities here. It gets pretty zany. There are also some really fun performances (Jim Gaffigan, Jon Hamm, John Slattery, Sarah Cooper, Bill Burr, Peter Dinklage, and Hugh Grant, especially). 

But as I’ve noted, feature films are not Jerry’s medium, so I don’t expect this to win a bunch of awards or anything. Not that Jerry cares anyway.