Unfrosted begins with Jerry Seinfeld’s Pop-Tart inventor character, Bob Cabana, telling an enthusiastic kid about the story of the breakfast pastry’s invention.
This set-up ends up justifying a lot of the wacky decisions that the director makes throughout the rest of the film, presumably to cater to the kid’s wild imagination. That involves a lot of over-the-top plot points that don’t seem appropriate for Unfrosted‘s corporate setting, even if we’re talking cereal businesses.
It’s in that same young audience that the film will most likely find most of its fans, even if many of its jokes hinge on previous knowledge about 1960s pop culture, which is an odd combination.
How does Unfrosted end?
Unfrosted wraps up the same way it kicks off. After going on a wild Pop-Tart-filled ride with Seinfeld’s Bob Cabana, Melissa McCarthy’s Donna Stankowski (Stan), and company, the film takes us back to the diner where Cabana first meets the young fan of the breakfast pastry.
In a bookend ending, Cabana goes back to his role as the narrator of the story, telling his young listener and the audience by association the fates of everyone involved in the story. The Pop-Tart was a hit, disappearing from shelves in 60 seconds (in real life it sold out in two weeks), Hugh Grant’s cereal mascot Thurl Ravenscroft ended up in court for inciting a riot at Kellogg’s headquarters, Chef Boy Ardee and Sea-Monkey inventor Harold von Braunhut raised their sentient ravioli lab-creation together, fitness guru Jack LaLane and soft ice-cream precursor Tom Carvel opened neighboring stores, Amy Schumer’s Marjorie Post became a feminist icon and built Mar-a-Lago (actually true), Stan decided to become a hippie and invented granola, and Cabapana finally installed his dream sod on his front lawn.
The movie also makes jokes about the milk mafia that the Kellog’s gang asked JFK to dismantle being behind his 1963 assassination, and the UNIVAC computer turning into Willard from Apocalypse Now.
Before we actually go back to the diner, though, Unfrosted finds time to fit in one last gag. You see, in the film, the central wonder food was meant to be called Trat-Pop until famed news anchor Walter Cronkite accidentally called it Pop-Tart. In reality, however, the pastry was named after the popular art movement of the time, led by Andy Warhol. As a reference to that connection, Seinfeld appears as Bob Cabana on an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson to talk about his smash hit product, only for the interview to be interrupted by Dan Levy as the late artist, who, outraged at the Kellog’s executive’s plagiarism, attempts to shoot him. Cabana is ultimately saved by the titanium foil packer of a Pop-Tart he had in his chest pocket.
After all that’s done, the movie treats its audience to an old-school dance number involving all the cast members to the sound of Meghan Trainor’s “Sweet Morning Heat,” made especially for the Seinfeld film.
Unfrosted is available to stream on Netflix. You can read We Got This Covered’s review here.