Jerry Seinfeld once wrote a joke about Pop-Tarts that ended like this: "When I was a kid and they invented the Pop-Tart, the back of my head blew off! I do not understand why other types of food continue to exist. My mother would continue to keep preparing meals and I’d go, "Mom, what are you doing? Don’t you see that it’s over?" There are two in each packet and two slots in the toaster. Why two? One's not enough, three's too many. And they can't go stale because they were never fresh."
He spent two years writing that joke, he told The New York Times, and as with most good jokes there’s an element of truth in it – Seinfeld certainly wasn't the only kid in America in the 1960s who was wild about Pop-Tarts.
So who better to produce, direct, star and co-write a ‘true-story’ comedy about the creation of Pop-Tarts than the comedian extraordinaire? Unfrosted, which lands today on Netflix in 4K and HDR, marks Seinfeld’s feature directorial debut and sees him in the lead role. He plays Bob Cabana, an employee of Kellogg's charged with helping the company pip its arch-rival Post to market with a toaster-prepared breakfast pastry.
Melissa McCarthy, Amy Schumer, Jim Gaffigan and Peter Dinklage also make up the star-studded cast for this “tale of ambition, betrayal, sugar, and menacing milkmen”. And Hugh Grant plays the role of Tony the Tiger – but of course! Seinfeld did tell Total Film that it might just be the dumbest film ever made...
Having included his Pop-Tarts joke in his 23 Hours to Kill stand-up show, which aired on Netflix back in 2020, he and his writing team of Spike Feresten and Andy Robin (who worked on Seinfeld) and Barry Marder (who writes for Seinfeld's stand-ups), used lockdown to get to work on the screenplay.
One just-in review from The New York Times calls Unfrosted "delightful with a sprinkle of morbidity"; another from The Hollywood Reporter describes it as "lightweight but satisfying"; and you can tell from the trailer alone (which begins with a toaster taking off like a spacecraft) that this cutthroat race to reinvent breakfast time is one wacky ride.
Seinfeld supposedly gave one key directive to Christophe Beck for the movie's soundtrack: “For everything to be just a little bit extra." And, having just watched it, I think that sums up Unfrosted perfectly.
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