FILM
POP-TART: NEVER STOP NEVER POPPING
★★★
OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / CERT 12 / 96 MINS
DIRECTOR Jerry Seinfeld
CAST Jerry Seinfeld, Melissa McCarthy, Jim Gaffigan, Amy Schumer, Hugh Grant
PLOT Kellogg’s boss Bob Cabana (Seinfeld) recounts an outlandish origin story for a revolutionary 1960s breakfast item: the Pop-Tart.
HOLLYWOOD’S RECENT PREDILECTION for depicting the invention of particular products has, so far, relied on demonstrating the gravitas of said product’s eventual existence: Nike’s Air Jordans in Air; the dawn of the smartphone in BlackBerry; Tetris in, well, Tetris. Unfrosted, Jerry Seinfeld’s Pop-Tarts movie (yes, that’s a Pop-Tarts movie starring, directed, co-written and produced by Jerry Seinfeld) takes the opposite approach. It is, by design, extremely silly —an exaggerated parody of those tropes that ascribes history-altering importance to the creation of a fruit-goo-filled rectangle. For kids, Unfrosted argues, the arrival of the Pop-Tart was the most seismic cultural event of the ’60s; Seinfeld himself was one of those kids.
His feature directorial debut, then, is a madcap, candy-coloured retro romp through a cereal civil war, as breakfast rivals Kellogg ’s and Post tool up to take first place in the toaster-pastry revolution. There is a small grain of truth in there (the companies really did battle over Kellogg ’s Pop-Tarts and Post’s Country Squares), but Seinfeld eschews facts in favour of a fructose-syrup screwball farce. Unfrosted’s bare-bones plot provides the basis for a cameo-stacked succession of skits and bits, as the food industry’s brightest minds assemble to dream the impossible amid a deeply unserious world of milkman syndicates, sugar cartels, and a computer that can predict people’s deaths. One subplot involves the creation of a sentient ravioli. Think Oppenheimer in Anchorman’s clothing, and you’re on the right track.
That ramp
