The audience tonight at the Hollywood premiere of Jerry Seinfeld’s “Unfrosted” will have a lot of laughs and a bit of an unexpected political surprise.
In the 90 minute comedy, Seinfeld can claim a first: a satirical segment sending up the January 6th Capitol insurgency.
The premise of the film is a war between Kellogg’s and Post Cereals over which one will get a jelly filled snack to grocery stores.
Hugh Grant plays the actor in the Tony the Tiger suit for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes. But he becomes increasingly upset with Kellogg’s for not ventilating the suit. Finally. as the company ignores his complaints — as well as Frosted Flakes — the character, Thurl, turns against Kellogg’s. He leads an insurgency at the Kellogg’s headquarters.
Grant’s costume is quite absolutely the same as the barechested guy who attacked the Capitol on January 6th wearing horns and a helmet. The real rioter, known as the Q-Anon Shaman, has been in jail since 2021. Grant’s Thurl, dressed the same way leads a huge riot outside Kellogg’s with armies of cartoon cereal characters including Snap, Crackle, and Pop. The breech the perimeter, enter the building, and start ransacking it.
Too soon? I’m told it’s like the MAD magazine version of January 6th. The movie, set in 1963, also includes send ups of JFK, Walter Cronkite, Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon, Nikita Khrushchev, and other 60s characters. There’s also a hilarious bit about “Mad Men” with Jon Hamm and Jon Slattery playing their old characters.
Will the January 6th parody get laughs? Or spark outrage? I would guess the first, although even that might be upsetting that we don’t take what happened three years ago seriously.
Here’s a funny promo featuring the great veteran actor Geoff Pierson. The actors in the glass box are Larry Thomas as the Soup Nazi, Phil Morris (son of “Mission Impossible” star Greg Morris) as Jackie Chiles, and Alexandra Wentworth (aka Mrs. George Stephanopolous) as “Shmoopie.”
