UNFROSTED (C-minus) - Rarely will you find a comedy with this many clunkers throughout. Jerry Seinfeld, who decided not to go way or just stick to the occasional standup tour charging $400 per ticket, instead blew tens of millions of dollars as director on his star-studded sop to the breakfast industry, a paean to the Pop Tart. He and his team of out-of-touch writers set the story in 1963, and they also time travel to the 1990s to dig up some hoary jokes.
This Netflix cheapie doesn't really know what it wants to be. At its core it is one in a line of capitalist origin-story reveries, like "Air" or the superior example of the genre, "BlackBerry." On the screen, it is a comedy by committee, a series of gags that would not be out of place on an episode of "The Monkees." Even though it is set in the Kennedy era (props to Bill Burr for being one of the few to salvage their reputation, with a winning JFK impersonation), it features songs from the late '60s and riffs on future cultural touchstones like "The Godfather" and other parodic flourishes that Mel Brooks beat to death in the 1980s.
While the cast list is impressive, the two main parts go to the heads of the bitter-rival Kellogg and Post families, played by Jim Gaffigan and Amy Schumer, two funny enough people who just are not meant for the big screen. Their acting deficiencies, combined with Seinfeld's notorious wooden delivery, are toxic here. And they cannot be rescued by an underused Melissa McCarthy, or a laundry list of cameos: Peter Dinklage, Christian Slater, Jack McBrayer, Dan Levy, Thomas Lennon, Kyle Mooney, Tony Hale, Cedric the Entertainer, and a bunch of "SNL" cast-offs. Only a few casting choices click: Fred Armisen as an FDA inspector; Hugh Grant as the snooty real-life actor who played Tony the Tiger; and Jon Hamm and John Slattery in an inspired set piece in which they revive mean-spirited versions of their era-appropriate "Mad Men" ad men.
The first 20 minutes of set-up was promising, and there are some laughs to be had, even if the batting average is awfully low. But by the final reel, it all turns ridiculous. The writing crew probably thought it would be cutting edge or downright subversive to spoof the January 6th Insurrection, but it's just tin-eared, childish and pretty much offensive in this context. Meantime, Seinfeld cavorts with his comic buddies in a candy-colored sitcom world and gets to drive around in classic cars, just as he likes to do, so at least he got to have fun with a big budget. But the film he created is shockingly amateurish.
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