By Thor

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“I’ve seen reviews from serious people who attempt to say that this lampoons the product-biopic-phenomenon; this is gaslighting. It lampoons nothing, except the careers of every person credited as part of the cast.” —a brain damaged dog.

Unfrosted follows the escapades of the sexless (in this case I mean sexless as being biologically unaligned) Kellogg Brothers, or whatever their relation —who really cares—as they attempt to save their company from having to compete in a duopoly. Naturally, hilarity ensues as they try to solve that problem by figuring out how to complete the perfect breakfast pastry, or maybe they already did that and Amy Shumer’s character stole it (more on her later), or maybe it’s to escape Big Milk™?  Gun to my head, I couldn’t tell you what the plot actually is and I submit to any person with two firing neurons to tell me they actually know what the hell went on. Unfrosted is a lone arm grasping a knife, floating in space, and tracing spirograph patterns as it violently stabs in every conceivable direction in an attempt to hit comedic pay-dirt. It’s mercifully short, and as a result the plot takes a back seat to the jokes. 

So how ‘bout them jokes? Well, though the cast was a buffet of comedic talent the writing smacks so potently with the tang of Seinfeld’s noxious style that it belies his dictatorial bent. A real comedy czar that prizes devotion over ingenuity, and the movie suffers SO much for it. Many bits that should be impossible to miss do so extraordinarily. Near the beginning Seinfeld’s character discovers kids rooting around in the garbage for pastry filling that they call ‘goo’ and it fuckin’ stinks. How is it possible to completely miss making a couple of grubby little feral bugbears eating trash funny? Ask the guy who read the back of a shampoo bottle for stand-up material. Other times it’s flavorless surface level interpretations of people and events from time like JFK (RIP Billy bitch tits) or January 6th—an event I’m sure Seinfeld cares about even less than I do—makes the moments of sharp clarity surrounding all the dated product references seem as though he truly does hate people and reveres products. When the Supreme Court upheld corporate personhood Jerry Seinfeld’s heart must have thrummed so harmoniously in unison with the strings of the universe he momentarily lost all material property.

(Side note: the movie painfully says dingus several times and it reminded me of a way funnier deployment of the word in The Hateful Eight, and I realized that movie, even though it’s 2 times longer and not explicitly a comedy, has 1000x more laughs per minute)

The funniest part about this film was that, after 90 minutes of total character assassination on Marjorie Post (Amy Shumer…rhech), they end the movie by mentioning she’s some type of undefined feminist icon. A truly incredible moment after they implied she’d have sex with the Premier of the Soviet Union for a cup of sugar. Seriously, in the credits they were like, “Boy we all had fun! Remember when we called her a cruel whore that commits treason? But in all seriousness Mrs. Post Jr. was a cool lady.”

Through some lens you could almost enjoy it in a Hellraiser kind of way. Like the Cenobites recreated the hall of presidents from the flayed husks of Comedy Central vets. A cavalcade of comedic talent and popular icons paraded through scene after scene that had all the charm found in the forced confessions of dissident prisoners filmed for propaganda, but without the humanity of being shot after. You know how when you see some entertainer you love appear on the screen and you point, gaup, and whisper-yell, “Holy shit that’s so-and-so.” That was not the experience of watching this film. In a demonically poetic twist I found myself, hands to my face, peering through the gaps in my fingers, like a scared child sneaking into a horror movie, dreading every turn around the corner for fear I might see Hannibal Buress, Stavros Halkias, or some other lovable comedic rascal had been drug into this. In a way I’m relieved that we occupy the strangest timeline on the continuum, because this is the reality that Larry David would rather hock crypto than be in his former writing partner’s directorial debut. 

I was going to draw this out further. Nothing gets the writing juices flowing like hate—you should see my rough draft—but I wanted to clear the deck so I could write about things that I enjoy—still haven’t written anything on Dune Part Two. I really haven’t given much opportunity to things that inspire my love and this world is already so full of cynicism and hate. Free Palestine by the way, Zionism can suck my dingus—the one thing Jerry Seinfeld hates more than genuine human interaction are Palestinians. 

We live in a time where the word satanic is thrown around more often on the internet by sun-beaten wine moms and manic boat owners than it was by premodern peasants in rural shtetls, but despite that I find Jerry Seinfeld, the man, deeply satanic. And I don’t mean Comet Ping-Pong-JFK-Jr. satanic—although the man is a known pedophile—I mean old world Pagan Catholic satanic. A Faustian devil who has prepared bespoke and ironic hell for all of the poor souls who’ve met him at various crossroads. Offering them fame and talent, talent he can freely give but never himself have, in exchange for a favor he will come calling for at a time yet revealed. This movie is that favor.