Sitcom megastar creates a cereal killer

That Jerry Seinfeld and his writing team mash-up a flake fracas and historical events is characteristic of what made Seinfeld such a cleverly funny show.

Christian Slater as Mike Diamond and Jerry Seinfeld as Bob Cabana in Unfrosted.

The space race, the Bay of Pigs, the mafia, drug cartels, the JKF assassination, #MeToo, child exploitation, sleazy advertising, sea monkeys, Nazis, fad diets, the 2021 attack on the US Capitol and … the list goes on. All of this comes into the comedy Unfrosted, directed, co-written by and starring Jerry Seinfeld.

The setting is Battle Creek, Michigan, 1963, and the plot is the fight “for tooth and tongue” between two cereal companies, Kellogg’s and Post, each of which still exist.

That Seinfeld and his writing team (Spike Feresten, Barry Marder and Andy Robin) mash-up a flake fracas and historical events is characteristic of what made Seinfeld (1989-98) such a cleverly funny show. You’ll remember the JFK shooting there involved a baseball star’s spit.

The cereal war frontline is the development of a fruit-filled pastie than can be heated. What we know, in 2024, as Pop-Tarts. On one side is Edsel Kellogg III (Jim Gaffigan) and on the other is Post boss Marjorie Post (Amy Schumer).

Kellogg’s head of development is Bob Cabana (Seinfeld). He hires former employee Donna Stankowski (Melissa McCarthy), who is making space food sticks at NASA. She brings with her the “unconventional minds of the 1960s”, who include sea monkeys inventor Harold von Braunhut (Thomas Lennon).

That Seinfeld can’t act doesn’t matter. He’s surrounded by people who can. Hugh Grant is the highlight, as Thurl Ravenscroft, a Shakespearean actor who dons a tiger suit as one of the cereal mascots.

When someone praises his one-man production of Twelve Angry Men, he says he doesn’t think he brought jurors six to nine to their full fruition. That someone is a milkman named Mike Diamond (Christian Slater), a made man in the milk mafia, which is determined to stop a cereal that does not need milk. “Without milk, bones can break,” he tells Cabana. His boss, the milk godfather, is played by Peter Dinklage.

If you want a Viking-helmeted Hugh Grant to lead a parodied attack on the US Capitol, you will not be disappointed. Another highlight is when Kellogg’s asks two “Madison Avenue admen” to put a name on the new cereal. It is Jon Hamm and John Slattery, hamming up their roles in Mad Men (2007-15).

Early on, Cabana is told his latest cereal, Fruit Loops, isn’t doing that well. He tells them to change fruit to froot and “double the sugar”.

That sort of sums up this absurdist movie, which is Seinfeld’s directorial debut: it’s double fun from first crunch to last.