Jerry Seinfeld is having a moment, and it isn’t all good

Jerry Seinfeld’s directorial debut “Unfrosted” began streaming on Netflix last week, and it’s getting a lot of attention, very little of it positive. But some of it may be unfair.

Seinfeld has become the center of controversy for comments made during the press tour for “Unfrosted.” During an episode of the “New Yorker’s Radio Hour,” Seinfeld said it was impossible to make comedy for TV anymore and said, “This is the result of the extreme left and PC crap and people worrying so much about offending other people.”

Seinfeld also has made news for his statements of support for Israel in the Israel-Hamas war. These statements on serious topics may be coloring the critical reception of his deeply unserious film, “Unfrosted.”

Set in 1963, “Unfrosted” is the sort-of-true story of the invention of the Pop-Tart, the nutritionally dubious breakfast staple that remains a childhood and — OK, fine, adulthood — favorite for an early morning sugar hit.

Kellogg’s and Post actually were competing to get a toaster pastry to market, as the film suggests, and a few of the characters depicted in the movie are based on actual people. But “Unfrosted” is a deeply unserious retelling of those events, full of bits and gags from nearly every recognizable comedian in the modern zeitgeist, and also Hugh Grant.

Seinfeld, who wrote and produced “Unfrosted,” stars in the movie as the fictional Kellogg’s executive Bob Cabana who teams up with Donna Stankowski (played by Melissa McCarthy) to beat Marjorie Post (played by Amy Schumer) at inventing a toastable pastry.

The film also stars Christian Slater, Jim Gaffigan, Kyle Mooney, Max Greenfield, Cedric The Entertainer, James Marsden, and, for reasons unknown, Hugh Grant as Tony the Tiger. It is a very silly 93-minute film that feels like the space race, but for breakfast.

On the heels of Seinfeld bemoaning the state of comedy, critics don’t have many nice things to say about his movie. “Unfrosted” has a 41% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 2.2 star average on Letterboxd.

Matt Zoller Seitz at rogerebert.com gave it half a star and described it as “a handsomely produced, nearly empty experience.” Richard Roeper at the Chicago Sun Times called it “one of the decade’s worst movies,” and David Ehrlich wrote on IndieWire that “Unfrosted” is “the perfect streaming comedy for anyone who felt ‘Oppenheimer’ had too many laughs.”

I’ll admit, Ehrlich’s review made me laugh harder than anything in Seinfeld’s movie did. But I didn’t hate “Unfrosted” nearly as much as most critics did.

It’s not a good movie. And I don’t think it purports to be. It’s not so much a feature film as a large gathering of comedians delivering absurd lines for an hour and a half. Its vibe is very much “we all got together and filmed this in one afternoon.” And everyone involved seemed to be having a great time.

In an interview with The Wrap, Seinfeld admits the idea for the movie started out as a joke with his “Seinfeld” collaborator Spike Feresten. After joking about making a Pop-Tart movie for years, they finally went for it during the COVID-19 pandemic. Which makes sense. The final product feels like something made during the period when we all lost our minds a little bit.

“Unfrosted” contains some of the strangest sequences I’ve ever seen on screen. There’s a Jan. 6-esque mascot insurrection on Kellogg’s headquarters led by a shirtless Hugh Grant wearing a tiger-striped Viking hat. There’s a jam-filled ravioli that comes to life and pops up throughout the movie. There’s a deeply irreverent funeral sequence that features Snap, Crackle and Pop presenting the Kellogg’s flag to the widow of a man killed in the process of inventing the Pop-Tart. Not all of these scenes are successful. One might argue none of them are. Altogether this movie doesn’t have so much a plot as a string of disjointed ideas, some kind of funny, some just bizarre.

But the movie’s biggest flaw, in my opinion, is its star. Jerry Seinfeld’s acting seems to have only gotten worse since his “Seinfeld” days, and it was pretty bad then. Now, without a laugh track, his flat affects and unconvincing line reads are made even more apparent. The other actors are doing the best with what they’ve been given. For too many of them, what they’ve been given is not much.

However there were a few jokes and performances that worked for me. Melissa McCarthy is perfectly charming as the NASA scientist turned Pop-Tart co-creator. Kyle Mooney, Mikey Day and Drew Darver added millennial humor that I most connected with. There’s a joke about Grape-Nuts that made me laugh out loud. These successes surprised me because my expectations were subterranean.

By the time I got around to watching “Unfrosted” on a Friday night, I had already seen a bulk of the negative reviews. So I had the benefit of expecting nothing, and in return getting a few solid laughs.

Out of curiosity, I showed the first hour to my two oldest kids, ages 12 and 9. They loved it — mostly, I think, because the production is bright, fun and warm, and the characters and jokes feel cartoon-adjacent. And I enjoyed watching it a second time because they were having such a great time.

I may have felt differently if I had paid money to see “Unfrosted” in the theater. But Netflix is the perfect place for “Unfrosted” to live, at no additional expense to the streaming platform’s subscribers. Some of those subscribers might have a perfectly pleasant time watching with one eye while playing Wordle with the other, as I did, and others might find the movie too unserious to bear.

But unserious might be what we need right now. This is, after all, the post-”Barbie” era, and moviemakers might be tempted to make more sincere films about consumer goods, a la “Air” and “Flamin’ Hot.” After a while, it will feel impossible to take movies about Cheetos seriously. So maybe it’s better to move in the direction of product-centric movies that are impossible to take seriously in the first place.

“Unfrosted” is rated PG-13 for mild language and innuendo, and is streaming on Netflix.