NOT SURE IF THIS STORY OF POP TARTS HAS MUCH HISTORY OR HUMOR

When I saw there was going to be a movie on Netflix about the creation of Kellogg’s Pop Tarts, I thought it might be kind of a funny premise for a movie. Jerry Seinfeld obviously had the same thought. He was creating the film and putting together a stellar cast of comedic minds that I thought might make for a fun movie without just being a boring story. The comedian gave us Unfrosted with the thought that we would learn as we laughed along. How much filling is in this movie pastry? Maybe too much.

The movie plot of Unfrosted is pretty cut and dried: Kellogg’s and Post cereal are in the same Michigan town vying for breakfast time supremacy. Post lives in the shadow of Kellogg’s and is run by Marjorie Post (Amy Schumer). Edsel Kellogg (Jim Gaffigan) is the owner of his lineage, and they win awards and rule the breakfast table. Post is trying to crack the code to a fruit filled pastry to make breakfast more fun and easy and overtake Kellogg’s. They are close to making the pastry based on stolen plans from Kellogg’s employees Bob Cabanna (Jerry Seinfeld) and Donna Stankowski (Melisa McCarthy). Once Bob gets wind of it there is a pseudo arms race similar to the atom bomb to get the pastry out first. Who will win? Do we care?

While this could be an interesting story to follow and something to have some fun with there are a few problems. First, you don’t know what parts of the story are real and are part of the real history of the possible race to get their products to the stores. There is only one fact that they own up to and that is Marjorie Post named Mar-a-Lago. Between all the jokes and overly silly bits that are akin to a Naked Gun film you don’t know if you’re actually learning anything about the story and if some of the zany antics are actually true. Second, a lot of the jokes fall flat. Between the gags about Post’s and Kellogg’s not being able to date even though they are obviously attracted to each other there are jokes about the dream team they hired to crack the pastry code with the inventor of Schwin bikes, Jack Lalane, and Chef Boyardee. They also throw in a dark milk man syndicate that doesn’t want milk off the table. Is it funny? I’m not sure. Maybe if I KNEW they really did that it might be funny. But I don’t know that. The only thing I really laughed out loud at was Kyle Dunnigan’s impression of Walter Cronkite and things he said to his off-screen director. Other than that, the laughs were few or overly groan worthy. No one really stands out in the main cast and the film as whole comes off as trying to be smarter than the viewer with its humor that lacks a frame of reference for most other than references to current events surrounding cereal mascots storming the building. I think I would rather see a documentary on the real story of how Pop Tarts came to be even if it was as boring as a bowl of Corn Flakes. You can skip this one I think because you won’t really know what you’re laughing about and you don’t learn anything historical as far as I can tell. Maybe they’ll come out with a story about the Pop Tart being frosted because we all know unfrosted Pop Tarts suck.