‘Unfrosted,’ or, Can Netflix Create a Cult Classic?
Plus: let’s monkey around!
Every once in a while, a comedy classic comes out and critics and general audiences alike aren’t quite sure what to do with it. Often, these tend toward absurdism: films like Zoolander or Wet Hot American Summer or Weird Al’s UHF. You might also throw movies like PCU or Super Troopers into this category. Comedies of this sort needed to be discovered by mass audiences not through one-time theatrical viewings but via repeated exposure, on HBO or VHS or DVD, consumed almost catechistically by devoted audiences.
I mention this because I have the nagging sense that Netflix’s Unfrosted may become one such cult comedy, if such a thing can even happen with a streaming movie. Despite being drubbed by critics (many of whom seem to be responding as much to writer-director-star Jerry Seinfeld’s comments about the state of comedy as the film itself), I think if you can get on Unfrosted’s wavelength and aren’t naturally repelled by its absurdist tendencies (which, admittedly, won’t be for everyone), you’ll really enjoy it.
Now, to be fair, part of the problem with Unfrosted is that it takes a bit too long to reveal its goofiness. If you went in expecting a straightforward produpic like Tetris or even a comical version of the same like The Beanie Bubble, you may be thrown a bit when, after playing the setup fairly straight, it pulls a hard left into Wackytown. Seinfeld plays Bob Cabana, a Kellogg’s exec who worries that the competition at Post is going to beat them to market with a jelly-stuffed strudel treat. Bob and his boss, Edsel Kellogg III (Jim Gaffigan), grow concerned after the competition seems unworried when Kellogg’s sweeps the annual breakfast awards: What does Marjorie Post (Amy Schumer) have up her sleeve?
Meanwhile, Bob has to juggle the ego of Thurl Ravenscroft (Hugh Grant), a Shakespearean actor suffering under Tony the Tiger’s mask who stumbles on the “It’s grrrrreat!” catchphrase during a commercial shoot. There’s lots of stumbling onto branding history, here, as when Bob says an orange drink has a real tang to it, and every time something like this happens, I groaned just a bit.
But the movie really gets going when it leans into ridiculousness. After learning from a pair of dumpster-diving children that the Post company is developing a secret toaster-warmed pastry, Bob assembles a dream team of figures real and fictional, guys like Jack LaLanne (James Marsden) and Chef Boy Ardee (Bobby Moynihan), to help them beat Post to the punch. It’s hard to describe what happens next without spoiling; suffice to say, the film’s tone hits its comic stride when a fictional Nazi scientist creates a mutant ravioli filled with sea monkeys that he chooses to raise as his own son with Chef Boy Ardee.
I mean, this is a movie where a milk cartel headed by Peter Dinklage and Christian Slater is implicated in JFK’s assassination; where JFK himself is suggested to have impregnated both of the Doublemint Twins; where the mascots Snap, Crackle, and Pop serve as the color guard at a funeral and hand deliver a folded cereal box prize to a grieving widow. If you don’t derive a chuckle from saintly father figure Jim Gaffigan grabbing a dumpster-diving urchin and threatening him with bodily harm, or from a weary Walter Cronkite only getting excited about news related to breakfast products, or from the image of a giant 16mm camera “hidden” on the handle of a broom, well, this probably isn’t the movie for you.
Again, I don’t think Unfrosted is perfect; I honestly wish it was a bit better so I could more comfortably go to the mattresses defending it. Seinfeld aspires to Airplane-level gag density but frequently fails to hit that two-to-three-joke-per-minute rate, which leads to several stretches that drag. But it’s hard to hate a movie in which Tony the Tiger is dressed up to resemble the QAnon Shaman as he leads a January 6-style insurrection against the decent folks of Kellogg’s marketing department.
In a previous age, this sort of movie could have faded from theaters, languished in obscurity a bit, and then risen from the ashes to become a cult comedy. I am unsure such a thing is possible on Netflix and the other streaming services, however. “Discovery” on Netflix differs from the discovery that follows repetition via HBO programming or the sharing of DVDs in dorm rooms and frat houses or the whims of midnight movie programmers at our nation’s fine repertory theaters. Netflix’s algorithm is no match for the dictatorial whims of an idiosyncratic programmer or consumer who falls in love with an oddity like Unfrosted. The cultural mechanism is simply different.
Make sure to check out this Friday’s episode of Across the Movie Aisle on “mid-TV,” that wave of good-looking, well-cast mediocrities flooding streaming services.
Links!
This week I reviewed Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Apes together strong? Click to find out!
On Across the Movie Aisle, we talked sex scenes (controversy!) and how pleasant The Fall Guy is (nontroversy!).
Make sure to read Adrienne LaFrance’s profile of Albert Brooks in The Atlantic. I talked to her for the Bulwark Goes to Hollywood this week, and I think you’ll really enjoy both that and this piece of writing.
Speaking of The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, last week I had Glenn Kenny, the author of The World Is Yours: The Story of Scarface, on the show. And buy a copy of the book!
The Last Stop in Yuma County is showing in some theaters this week as well as available for purchase from Apple and other fine VOD retailers. I liked it a lot and I hope you check it out.
S. Craig Zahler, the auteur behind the cult indie hits Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99, and Dragged Across Concrete, is finally set to make his next film, his first since 2018. I am very much looking forward to this.
As one of the dozens of fans of The Chronicles of Riddick, I’m glad there’s another iteration of these silly movies coming out.
Assigned Viewing: War for the Planet of the Apes (Max, Hulu)
I rewatched this a couple of weeks ago in preparation for the new Apes movie and it’s kind of amazingly bizarre, at least as far as big-budget IP-based blockbusters go. Like, a third of the movie is almost a spaghetti western, right down to the horse-backed, bandolier-wearing Caesar and his crew as well as the Leone-aping (I’m sorry) score. Another third of the movie is a not-so-hidden Apocalypse Now riff, down to Woody Harrelson’s bald head and unsound methods. And the last third is like a riff on the idiot comedy of Saving Silverman, thanks to Steve Zahn’s comic-relief ape. I don’t know that the whole thing works, but it’s never boring.
It's a real coin flip whether Unfrosted or the Apple iPad ad had a more over-torqued internet brain reaction this week.
My spouse and I laughed at a lot of Unfrosted. It was a kick to see Seinfeld's friends in it, the cereal funeral was a stitch, and bringing in Don and Roger from MadMen was genius. We're old enough to get the references and jokes. A younger audience may miss most of that.