Movies

Seinfeld Star's 41%-Tomatometer Flop Somehow Just Blew Up Netflix Top

Seinfeld Star's 41%-Tomatometer Flop Somehow Just Blew Up Netflix Top
Image credit: Legion-Media, Netflix

Is it bad? Is it good? In this case, you have to see it for yourself to answer that question.

On July 5, 1989, NBC aired the first episode of Seinfeld, the legendary sitcom that ran for nine years and influenced television comedy and beyond.

The pilot, in which Jerry Seinfeld tried to find out if a girl he knew liked him or not, made a disgusting impression on NBC executives. Somehow the creators of the show managed to get permission to shoot four more episodes (the first season turned out to be very short). At the same time, some of the mistakes were fixed: from the second episode, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, known from Saturday Night Live, joined the main cast in the role of Seinfeld's ex. And the rest is history.

Jerry Seinfeld was not particularly eager to return to the screen – over the past 25 years, he has made a few stand-up routines, played himself in sitcoms, and voiced an annoying bee in Bee Movie. So it's surprising that the comedian would want to make his directorial debut and star in an absurdist comedy about how competing companies fought to create Pop-Tarts.

Unfrosted centers on the battle in the early 1960s between two major cereal companies, Kellogg and Post, as they desperately try to come up with a new kind of popular breakfast food.

Unfrosted Has a Star-Studded Cast But Its Release Has Been Delayed for Years

Seinfeld Star's 41%-Tomatometer Flop Somehow Just Blew Up Netflix Top - image 1

On the one hand, the movie has an incredible cast: in addition to Seinfeld, the comedy stars Christian Slater, Hugh Grant, Melissa McCarthy, Peter Dinklage and a dozen other charismatic artists. On the other hand, filming finished two years ago, and there must be a reason why Netflix kept the star-studded comedy on the shelf for so long.

Suspicions were confirmed after the comedy was finally released on Netflix – although it became the most-watched movie on the platform at one point, its Rotten Tomatoes score is not the highest one: only 40% from critics and 57% from viewers.

Critics Hated the Movie, But Fans Beg to Differ

Seinfeld Star's 41%-Tomatometer Flop Somehow Just Blew Up Netflix Top - image 2

However, despite the rather low ratings, fans are not so strict about Unfrosted – many viewers admit that in the end it turned out to be an obviously unnecessary and silly movie that unwittingly parodies last year's trend for corporate biopics, such as Air.

“It feels like a mid-2000s spoof movie with a ton of those generic Seinfeld observational jokes. [...] It was a fun little Friday night flick to watch at home,” Reddit user hiseous_coffee wrote.

So if you're a hardcore Seinfeld fan, ignore the ratings and just have a fun night watching Unfrosted.