Unfrosted (3/5 Stars)

 

There is a scene in Unfrosted, a movie that parodies the making of the original Pop-Tarts, in which the product is tested in the labs over there at Kellog’s. The brains behind the operation, Bob Cabana (played by Jerry Seinfeld) and Donna Stankowski (played by Melissa McCarthy) are stationed behind sandbags, plate glass and barb wire while Steve Schwinn (played by Jack McBryer) dressed as an astronaut tests out the products ability to interact with an ordinary kitchen toaster. This takes place on Earth, but Steve Schwinn moves in slow motion as if miming the low gravity of the moon. Then Bob Cabana looks over at Donna Stankowski and mugs, “Isn’t this a bit much?”

Take a moment to consider the context. Kellog’s didn’t test the first pop-tart this way. Indeed, Kellog’s didn’t even make up this story as part of an advertising campaign for the Pop-Tart. So it doesn’t make sense for the joke to be on a self-serious and unaware Kellog’s. Actually, the reason why the making of the Pop-Tart is being treated as if it is a NASA mission is because of Jerry Seinfeld. It is Jerry Seinfeld that really likes Pop-Tarts. It is Jerry Seinfeld that co-wrote this movie, directed it, and cast himself as the lead. So when Jerry Seinfeld remarks, “Isn’t this a bit much?” there is only one person who can be the object of that joke, himself. But the character Bob Cabana doesn’t seem to understand this, and really, the movie doesn’t understand it either, which is the main reason why the majority of it fails comedically.

Jerry Seinfeld once remarked that making a sitcom episode is like running with an egg. A movie is a compartmentalized and cooperative process and a joke is a fragile thing. For the joke to survive from inspiration to showtime, it needs to successfully survive writing, production, editing etc. Sometimes you can pinpoint, where exactly in the process the joke fails. Unfrosted is an example of a movie failing at the starting gun. The idea is wrong. The movie doesn’t know where the joke is.

If Unfrosted was going to work, then Jerry Seinfeld and his obsession with highly processed breakfast options needed to be the object of satire. To do this, he should have cast himself as the CEO of Kellog’s and he should have played the part straight with no winking. Then Jim Gaffigan should have been the long-suffering and weirdly obsequious Bob Cabana. Jerry Seinfeld and Jim Gaffigan should have switched parts.

Then when the CEO of Kellog’s, Jerry Seinfeld, insists that competitors are to be spied upon, that a head scientist from NASA is to be poached, and that a coterie of crazy persons are hired to perform research (don’t change any of this, definitely keep Bobby Moynihan as Chef Boy Ardee), this will be funny because Jerry Seinfeld really is crazy about Pop-Tarts and everyone in Hollywood would gladly do anything he wanted. Just take a look at the cast herein, if you don’t believe me on that note. Jerry Seinfeld has such tremendous good will stored up from his TV show, which itself made so much money, that a rolled up red carpet follows him around on the off-chance he might want to do something, anything, other than stand-up comedy. (I heard he once remarked off the cuff something about bees being interesting. A year later, you had The Bee Movie.) That reality can be funny, particularly in the context of an unimportant breakfast option, but this movie doesn’t see that potential. It is frustrating to see so much not quite work and so much left on the table.

Here is an example of something left on the table. Melissa McCarthy, a NASA food scientist, is poached by Jerry Seinfeld. He argues to her that Pop-Tarts are an exciting innovative frontier in food and that it is a waste of her time to be working on the moon because that is never going to happen. Walk on the moon, Jerry scoffs, come on. Okay, that is funny enough. But where is the scene where NASA actually does put men on the moon and Melissa gets angry at Kellog’s because she missed it to work on Pop-Tarts. (This would be the dramatic end of Act II, a development that threatens to pull the team apart for good). And now imagine Melissa getting mad at Jim Gaffigan instead of Jerry Seinfeld because I switched the characters. Same goes for the Pablo Escobar and the Milk Thugs scenes. I mean, Jim Gaffigan can actually act ashamed/scared. Or to put it another way, Jim Gaffigan can actually act.

And wouldn’t it be funnier if Jon Hamm and Jon Slattery had a good idea for the marketing of Pop-Tarts, which Jerry Seinfeld rejects because he wants the moon. (That’s a MadMen reference). And wouldn’t it be funnier if, but I should stop here, I don’t want to be too obvious about wanting to work with Jerry Seinfeld.

The Boy and the Heron (3/5 Stars)

I saw my first Miyazaki movie, Spirited Away, when I was in college. It had come out a few years before that and had won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. It was part of a cultural wave that took subtitles into the mainstream. I thought it was a good movie without fully understanding it. A few years ago, I decided to watch it again, thinking that I would have a better grasp of what was going on within it. After all, I had twenty more years of life experience, saw many more movies, and had married a Japanese woman. The second time around, I understood it less than I thought it would. I still don’t quite get many parts of it. (Why is the furnace guy, half-spider?) I reread Roger Ebert’s review of it, and I don’t think Roger fully understood it either, but that wouldn’t stop either of us from admitting that it is a great movie. Sometimes, on a very basic level, you can just tell.

Indeed, having watched several of Miyazaki’s other movies and now The Boy and the Heron, it occurs to me that maybe these movies aren’t just replete with references that only the Japanese would know naturally. Maybe these movies are universally weird. It is hard to say.

Not that I can’t grasp the basics. I understand the basic emotional throughline. The movie takes place in the immediate aftermath of World War II. The boy’s mother died in a fire-bombing. After the war, his father moves his family to the countryside and he marries the sister. But the spirit of the mother still haunts the boy and this takes form in a strange building that is either a portal into another spiritual dimension, a temporal plane that takes place in the much distant past, and/or the product of space aliens. A grey heron, creepy and then funny, pesters the boy into following him into this fantasy land whereupon he happens upon many magical creatures and has several adventures. I think he succeeds in the end, in that sort of coming-of-age non-material maturation way.

I have a full knowledge of Aesop’s fables, greek mythology, arthurian legends, Grimm’s tales and other western folklore. I can only imagine that much of what is here might be references to past versions of Eastern folklore. The heron probably has some significance as may the carnivorous parakeets. But I do not know for sure. What I can tell you is that the movie is visually arresting, that it moves along at a fair pace and that there is always something to either marvel at or ponder over. The grey heron is a bit of a scene stealer, in particular, the way that it is animated so it is both an actual bird and some sort of costume for a small fat man.

In any event, I am very glad I saw it in a movie theater. And I’m pretty sure it would have been just fine without the subtitles too.