Yeah, it gets a mere 66% on RT.
I appear to be wrong. I looked it up. It was not Godfather III.
It was Full Metal Jacket from Kubrick. Must remember that Ebert gave 2 1/2 stars, a review that must have come out of his expectations being very wrong about the movie.
That clearly is an unjustifiable rating no matter how good the little dog movie is. I think both said their ratings were based on the expected audience for the movie genre, so it’s possible that Benji was a very good family movie deserving high rating.
A little looking around turned up this NYT article on the matter. Siskel gave Thumbs Up to Full Metal Jacket and Thumbs Down to Benji. Ebert, ever playing the part of the fatuous ass gave the opposite result and I see no need to ever see Benji the Hunted because of his boneheaded review.
For breakfast cereal humor, the gold standard remains this Rice Krispies opera from 1970
The real Marjorie Post was over a generation older than the Amy Schumer character, and would have been familiar with the Kremlin. Her husband had been the US’s second ambassador in the 30s, while she bought up Czarist-era artwork at fire sale prices. According to Simon Sebag-Montefiore, from her bedroom window she could hear the trucks outside the Lubyanka gunning their engines to cover the sound of the shootings.
The fact Mar-A-Lago was her thing did at least teach me one thing by the end of Unfrosted. I did appreciate the “bastian of feminism…Mar-A-Lago” joke near the end.
The Road to Wellville is an underappeciated gem in the vein of historical breakfast cereal humor.
My wife and I were listening to Jim Gaffigan on the ‘Fly on the Wall’ podcast with Dana Carvey and David Spade yesterday, and they were of course talking about his role in ‘Unfrosted’. In the course of the conversation, Gaffigan made mention of how breakfast cereals like cornflakes were invented to try to stop masturbation, and my wife said ‘whaaaat? Is that true?” And I said it actually was, and that we should watch TRtW, which Dana Carvey is actually in- I’m surprised he didn’t mention that in the course of the conversation.
So, we may be watching ‘The Road to Wellville’ tonight, as part of a weird, barely factual, comedy weekend double feature about historical cereal company shenanigans.
“Masturbation is the silent killer of the night!”
(That’s a quote from TRtW…)
Has Seinfeld ever been involved in anything Superman? Isn’t Superman one of his things?
He hosted a documentary about Abbott and Costello 30 years ago:
I liked it, but it could definitely use some herbal enhancement.
Larry David was the creative force. He did it again.
Indeed. After the Seinfeld series, Larry David was the guy who created Curb Your Enthusiasm which ran on HBO for nearly 24 years. Jerry Seinfeld created “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee”. 
Yeah, after watching Curb it became clear that David was the creative force and sensibility behind Seinfeld.
“ Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” I didn’t hate, but it was ok because it was Seinfeld not trying too hard, just shooting the shit with other funny people. When Seinfeld tries too hard to be funny is when he really bombs, I think, as in ‘The Bee Movie’ and ‘Unfrosted’.
I didn’t hate it, either, it’s just that Seinfeld contributed nothing to it other than his money and fame enabling him to borrow exotic cars and then get celebrities to join him for coffee. To the extent that the ensuing conversations were interesting at all, it was entirely due to any interest one may have had in said celebrity, and nothing contributed by Seinfeld.
TBH, I don’t really hate the guy – one has to admire anyone who can make people laugh in this world of sin and woe – it’s just that he’s so incredibly over-rated and such a selfish jerk who’s far wealthier than was every justified by anything he’s ever done, and was only achieved by shameless greed.
I was going to use the exact same words, except for Weird: The Al Yankovic Story as the proper comparison.
It wasn’t all bad. But I’d say if you trimmed the unfunny and the self-indulgent parts out of it you’d have something too long to be an SNL sketch but not long enough for an entire sitcom episode.
I just gave it a try, as this thread made me curious. I watched the first 12 minutes and decided it’s not for me. The jokes just weren’t very funny.
I’m hardly the only one who thought about The Hudsucker Proxy while watching it, same as when I watched American Fiction and remembered Hollywood Shuffle.
If you’ve got Netflix, might as well watch it. If it were at the AMC, you’d nope out. It struck me like one of those 1990s comedy movie class reunions of 1960s sitcoms, with kids’ cereals instead of either uncle Jed or Martin. The jokes weren’t really funny, you just laughed out of self-congratulation for getting the references.
They should’ve played it totally serious. That might’ve made it funny.
Saw it over the weekend. Not terrible, just kind of dumb all around. As others have said, it’s like an SNL sketch that goes on way too long. I will say, though, that the funeral with the “full cereal honors” had me laughing my ass off.
I wasn’t laughing like crazy, but it did make me laugh somewhat.
What a strange movie.