Seinfeld’s Netflix Pop-Tart Movie Is Embarrassing Everyone

Growing up, I loved Pop-Tarts. I don’t think this is a particularly new feeling for an American child; They’re delicious little squares of crust and fruit, wrapped in silver packets, like blocks of kid-friendly cocaine. Like many children (and some adults), I never considered that something I liked might be bad for me until one day in eighth grade, Mrs. Schenck saw one of us open a package and said, “There is zero nutritional value in a Pop-Tart.” Maybe she thought shame would change the habits of a bunch of skinny preteens. However, Pop-Tarts do not fall under the purview of anyone remotely concerned with shame.

Immature, the Netflix-produced directorial debut of Jerry Seinfeld, is loosely based on the wild story of how Pop-Tarts came to be. Seinfeld, who also co-wrote the film, stars as Bob Cabana, a Kellogg’s marketing executive, loosely based on William Post, food industry executive. With the help of Melissa McCarthy as former NASA scientist Donna Stankowski, Cabana is tasked with beating Kellogg’s rival Post Cereals to market with a shelf-stable pastry, a product that would change the breakfast world of 1963. The good stuffbut about corporate snack innovation, and played with the absurdity this premise implies.

A line of famously funny people from a killer pop up and do 30 second bits at a time, from Hugh Grant as diva Tony the Tiger (playing on his real reputation) to Drew Tarver of The other TWO Playing Pop, one of the Rice Krispies mascot elves (playing on his character’s reputation The other TWO). It’s a pretty family-friendly affair, even if most of the jokes will fly over kids’ heads. How familiar are your children with it? the January 6 uprising?

The premise sounds silly, of course. Foolish even. But Seinfeld doesn’t show it. Immature has a brisk pace, is playfully acted and the script, co-written by Spike Feresten, Andy Robin and Barry Marder, contains not an ounce of self-consciousness. It’s funny sometimes, even though it’s a depressing, vulgar little project.

There is no aspect of the American experience that cannot be grafted onto a product. This is one of the core principles of advertising: the best way to sell something is to associate it with what the audience holds dear. But lately, Hollywood, in a desperate search for well-known intellectual property that will guarantee an audience, has also taken action. To consider: Flamin’ Hot turning a bag of Cheetos into a paean to the idealized immigrant experience, Barbie as a pop-feminist treatise, or Sky as a lament for monoculture. It’s shameful to conduct culture through this lens constantly looking for new paths to marry the human experience with the things you can buy.

Next to each other Immature Compared to other films in the burgeoning product mythology canon, it’s not as clear what Seinfeld is trying to achieve with his film’s jokes. But there are points to connect. Bob Cabana, in a running gag, finds constant inspiration in a pair of precocious kids who go dumpster diving at Post Cereals for the sheer rush of it, snacking on leftover fillings and other edible waste the company throws away. Cabana and his colleagues at both Kellogg’s and Post are corporate minions, unconcerned with idealism. They just want to win the breakfast war, and they’re happy to shovel sugar and other shelf-stable additives onto supermarket shelves if it hurts sales. Likewise, they’re eager to grease whatever palms it takes—making deals with everyone from Nikita Khrushchev (Dean Norris) to an FDA agent (Fred Armisen)—to get their latest food experiment on American tables.

Photo: John P. Johnson / Netflix

Despite the family-friendly veneer, Immature is a resolutely cynical work. Step outside the candy-colored glow of the warm cinematography and the picture is gloomy. Just as Pop-Tarts come from the film executives studying waste, Hollywood’s desperation for marketable IP means studios are happy to greenlight literal waste. What does it mean that Jerry Seinfeld—a man who will never have to work a day in his life if he doesn’t want to, a man who’s mostly famous these days for just hanging out—is back with a movie that proves Hollywood will greenlight give for a film about any old brand, no matter how nonsensical?

Not much, as it turns out. According to Seinfeld himself: Immature is but an exercise in warm folly, emerging from the bleak early days of the COVID-19 pandemic And a terribly Long stand-up joke about how much joy the treat brought him as a child. As revered as he is in comedy, his material It was never really about pushing buttonsno matter what he might say about how PC culture makes comedy more difficult.

The thing is, Seinfeld’s Pop-Tart joke is right. Pop tarts Doing make you feel good. They’re hot and sweet and just the right size to enjoy without feeling too bad about it. I still get myself a box of Pop-Tarts every now and then, the way someone who has quit smoking might indulge in a loose one. I can forget myself for a moment when I eat a Pop-Tart. That’s a nice feeling. Immature is not about that feeling. It’s about the product. The film represents months and months of sustained work by hundreds of people, including many of the most talented and recognizable names in their fields, in service of a story that has no satirical edge, nor any human connection. It takes all the pleasure that can be extracted from a Pop-Tart and chokes on it.

Immature is now streaming on Netflix.