Netflixable? Seinfeld celebrates Boomer Breakfast One Last time in “Unfrosted”

“Unfrosted” is “The Right Stuff” filtered through the “Bee Movie” and TV-honed shtick of Jerry Seinfeld. Seinfeld’s comic riff on “the breakfast wars” that Post and Kellogg’s fought in his youth is an amusing wallow in boomer nostalgia, a broad farce about the mostly-fictionalized battle to be the first to get a “shelf stable” (Yummm, extra PRESERVATIVES!) breakfast pastry to the market.

Maybe you have to be a baby boomer to get into a Pop Tarts lampoon. But as we watch a “Barbie” colored send-up of everything from the space program to JFK — the president and the Ollie Stone movie — with a tipsy Walter Cronkite (Kyle Dunnigan), cereal mascots and a fanciful Hugh Grant take on Tony-the-Tiger voice Thurl Ravenscroft as a Master Thespian, I laughed.

Hey, anything to keep Old Man Seinfeld from whining about “woke culture” or he and his cookbooks-for-fellow-goldiggers wife from financing “counter” protests against anti-genocide protests, right?

Yeah, Jerry has aged into Uncle Leo, looking for anti-Semites under every contrary opinion and laughs in the diabetic coma of 1960s breakfast cereals.

Where “Barbie” made a modern feminist statement out of a ’60s doll, “Unfrosted” wallows in the “Mad Men” ethos and tooth decaying breakfast offerings of the mid-century-modern past.

Director and co-writer Seinfeld stars as Bob Cabana, a Big Ideas Man at Kellogg’s, reveling in the company’s dominance of arch-rival Post at the 1963 Bowl & Spoon Awards, honoring Battle Creek, Michigan’s industry town industries.

But Bob doesn’t rest on his laurels or dream of a “sod” lawn as he drives that Car-that-Killed-Ernie-Kovacs to and from work. Post, and its crafty chairwoman Marijorie Post (Amy Schumer), are onto something new. He’s sure of it.

Bob soon figures out what it is, a stolen abandoned idea that he himself pushed, a “shelf-stable” fruit (ish) filled toaster pastry.

The race is on, with Bob begging Edsel Kellogg (Jim Gaffigan) to let him lure his old ideas-partner (Melissa McCarthy) back from NASA.

“Men on the moon? Hah!”

They assemble an all-star team of “Taste Pilots” — guys like a Schwinn (Jack McBrayer), a Carvel (Adrian Martinez), Chef Boy-ar-dee (Bobby Monaghan) and a “Never a member of ze Nazi Party” type German fop (Thomas Lennon, a strudel-accented hoot).

They bring in “Mad Men” to help sell it. Real “Mad Men.” You know, Hamm and Slattery.

But Bob’s got unruly mascots to contend with — quarrelsome Snap, Crackle and Pop, that pretentious Ravenscroft squeezing in “King Lear” rehearsals between appearances in the Tony-the-Tiger felt suit.

He’s getting pressure from “The Milk Syndicate,” with Christian Slater playing the muscle and Peter Dinklage stealing the movie as the ruthless dairy mafia don.

And there are these two precocious, dumpster-diving Post sugar-junkie moppets (Eleanor Sweeney and Bailey Sheetz, insufferably fun) who might be his ace in the hole at this pivotal moment in America’s breakfast wars. They’ve tasted “the hot fruit lightning that THE MAN doesn’t want you to have” that Post has cooked-up. So Bob knows what he’s up against.

Seinfeld recycles his best acting tricks from “Seinfeld. Every time a new ingredient is discussed — barking “PECTIN!” “Xantham Gum!” and “RIBOFLAVIN” like he’s seen his nemesis “NEWMAN” one more time.

The cameos pile up like the one-liners about “There’s always a surprise in the box” and “Vietnam? That looks like a good idea.” Bill Burr plays JFK, Cedric the Entertainer is the Bowl & Spoon Awards emcee, and “Seinfeld” regulars and many an unemployed “Saturday Night Live” alumnus shows up for a scene or two.

Yes, most every joke churned out here has a “low hanging fruit” or “fruit food colored” air about it. But Gaffigan, Schumer, McCarthy, Grant and most everybody here has a chance to score. And so they do.

There’s also whimsy in the casting — Grant as a strike-leading mascot actor quoting Shakespeare, James Marsden as “bulging” fitness guru Jack Lalanne, Dan Levy as Andy Warhol?

That’s GOLD, Jerry! Or, you know, a honey-shaded high fructose food coloring version of it. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, “Uncle Leo.”

Rating: PG-13, profanity, innuendo, smoking

Cast: Jerry Seinfeld, Melissa McCarthy, Amy Schumer, Jim Gaffigan, Cedric the Entertainer, James Marsden, Jack McBrayer, Adrian Martinez and Hugh Grant

Credits: Directed by Jerry Seinfeld, scripted by Jerry Seinfeld, Spike Feresten and Andy Robin. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:36

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About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine
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