like if oppenheimer and the weird al biopic had a baby that was half as good as either of them: my review of unfrosted (2024)
spoilers! but maybe im doing you a favor by spoiling it....
i am sick and tired of getting advertisements for jerry seinfeld’s unfrosted (2024).
i see it when i’m trying to watch youtube, i’m pretty sure i heard something about it on the radio during work, i even saw promo for it while watching snl!! the one place i thought i was safe.
so after this advertising ASSAULT that i endured, i figured, eh, what the hell. if jerry’s gonna talk about this film like it’s his magnum opus, and if they’re gonna plug this movie so much, i’ll watch it. it better be good.
it was not.
spoilers ahead.
i get that biopics are in season, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that every new movie that comes out has to be one.
and the bombshell (see what i did there?) success of oppenheimer (2023) or the cult-classicness of weird: the al yankovic story (2022) doesn’t make a stronger or more compelling case for why unfrosted should exist.
i think unfrosted is a parody. but it’s not a good parody of biopics like weird was1, it’s a parody of a parody.
the whole movie is set up like a weird inside joke, and you’d forget the movie was supposed to have a cohesive narrative if they weren’t mentioning it every goddamn scene. and how many goddamn subplots does this movie need? i almost lost track of the whole “creation of the pop tart” thing because of whatever the hell gaffigan and schumer had going on, the mascots going on strike, and some weird political/mafia thing featuring nikita kruschev2. i even forgot the MOON LANDING was a part of this movie until i read the wikipedia plot summary to refresh my memory. i saw a review on letterboxd comparing parts of this to just a bunch of comedy sketches, and, with how this movie seems to be held together by a pop tart and a dream, i totally agree.
unfrosted COULD be good. somewhere, deep in the 93 minutes of slop that is this movie, there’s something to latch onto. but nobody ever figures out what it is, and as the viewer, it just feels like there’s something missing the whole time, which makes me doubt that even the filmmakers knew what they were doing with this, just that they needed to do it to stay relevant.
and to attempt to achieve relevancy, this movie just throws everything it has at the wall hoping that something will stick, but as you can probably guess from reading this, it doesn’t work.
hugh grant doing january 6th was unnecessary. we didn’t need to bring back mad men for this movie (and quite frankly, doing that kinda soured my opinion on it.) and i love dan levy as much as the next guy, but was his part as andy warhol with a gun really that necessary?
alright, i’ve said a lot of negative stuff about this movie. it’s time to say the things i liked about unfrosted.
i’m always a sucker for former snl cast members being in stuff. so imagine my surprise when i saw bobby moynihan (who apparently really was speaking some italian), fred armisen, mikey day, and kyle mooney.
if there’s one thing melissa mccarthy will do, it’s commit to a character.
not to bring up the cinematic masterpiece that is the love guru (2008) again, but apparently i find news anchors in comedies whose lives are actively falling apart around them to be HILARIOUS and kyle dunnigan’s walter cronkite was no exception.
it was nice being able to recognize a lot of the cast. and i think releasing it around netflix is a joke fest was a good move because everyone’s already kind of in the area to do promo.
final review? 2 stars. said “we’re so back” when i saw a comedian i liked and “it’s so over” every other time.
and it actually made sense for the weird al biopic to be a parody of biopics because, well, that’s his whole brand. pop tarts aren’t exactly known for their biting satire.
btdubs, very believable that amy schumer and kruschev would be tight. maybe they’ll even find each other in hell.