The most fun part of Unfrosted, the Netflix movie that allows first-time director Jerry Seinfeld to explore several of his personal passions (breakfast food, boomer nostalgia, references to the Zapruder film), is waiting to see which of your favorite comedic actors will show up next.
At least 50 percent of the most talented funny people in Hollywood co-star in this thing. Melissa McCarthy? She’s in it. Hugh Grant? Why wouldn’t Hugh Grant agree to play a Tony the Tiger impersonator in a film about the development of the Pop-Tart? Jim Gaffigan, Amy Schumer, James Marsden, Fred Armisen, Thomas Lennon, and Mikey Day, Kyle Mooney and The Other Two’s Drew Tarver playing Snap, Crackle, and Pop: All are fully represented, and this is still only a very partial list of the cast.
But easily the best cameos — and the best scene in a film that’s more of a sugar crash than a sugar high — come in the final half-hour of Unfrosted, when Jim Gaffigan’s Edsel Kellogg III announces that he’s summoned some “Madison Avenue ad-men types†to pitch ideas about how to market the company’s new toaster treat.
Cut to the next scene, where Jon Hamm is standing in a Kellogg’s conference room presenting his ideas while his colleague, played by John Slattery, sits to his right. The names of these characters are never properly identified, although at one point Hamm refers to Slattery as Roger and McCarthy calls Hamm “Florsheim.†(IMDb lists them simply as Ad Man #1 and Ad Man #2.) It doesn’t matter because it’s immediately obvious that Hamm and Slattery are basically just playing their characters from Mad Men, Don Draper and Roger Sterling. Immediately, this sets off SCPD body tingles, the physical sensation one gets as soon as they remember how much they miss every single flawed idiot who worked at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce during Mad Men’s seven-season run on AMC.
In keeping with its fascination with the past, Unfrosted leans hard into Mad Men nostalgia. “Kellogg’s: It’s more than a name,†Hamm/Don begins, sounding very much like he did during the pitch for Kodak’s Carousel. “It’s the warm embrace of home, of family.â€
Hamm/Don then suggests that the still-unnamed fruit-filled pastries should be called Jelle Jolie, a riff on the Belle Jolie lipstick campaign that was central to Mad Men’s first season. He also offers two potential off-shoots: Jelle Jolie Noir, featuring a hint of “chocolat,†and Jelle Jolie Sensual, “with no packet for those who dare. Because his pleasure is also hers’.†That is a very Don-sounding slogan.
Slattery/Roger, meanwhile, spends the scene doing what Roger Sterling always did best: making sarcastic comments while acting like a total elitist. “I’ve been in your town for six hours, you know what I see?†he says to the team at Kellogg’s for absolutely no apparent reason. “Dead trees and sad, lonely women.â€
Disappointed in the lack of vision on the part of Team Kellogg’s, the two ad men eventually prepare to leave, but not before a few more homages to Mad Men episodes. “Tell you what, I’ll be retired on a bluff overlooking Stinson Beach while you’re still genuflecting before the god of mediocrity,†Hamm/Don condescendingly tells the group, a reference to the final scene in the series when Don is indeed retired from advertising and meditating on a bluff.
When Kellogg’s employee Bob Cabana (Seinfeld) wonders out loud why these guys are so rude — “Why are they so mean? It’s just advertising.†— Hamm/Don tells him, “You will never swim the English Channel and then drown in champagne,†words borrowed from a major speech Don delivers to the agency’s employees in the season five episode “Christmas Waltz.â€
Then, on their way out, Hamm/Don expresses interest in hiring McCarthy’s Donna “Stan†Stankowski, noting that he will “call her from a payphone,†yet another callback to the Mad Men finale in which Don called Peggy from a payphone before, you know, retiring on a bluff.
All of this is easily the most delightful part of Unfrosted. Okay, admittedly, the bar there is low, but still! For Mad Men fans keeping score, this is also the third time in three years that Hamm and Slattery have reunited in a movie. Last year, Hamm starred in the Slattery-directed Maggie Moore, though the two did not appear on camera together. In 2022, they co-starred and even hit up a bar together again in the criminally underrated Confess, Fletch. Look, if we can’t have Mad Men back, knowing that Slattery and Hamm will show up side-by-side in some random project on a yearly basis is at least a halfway-decent substitute. Because seeing them together is just like the experience Hamm/Don said consumers have with Kellogg’s: It’s the warm embrace of home, of (heavy-drinking) family.