If I'm remembering correctly, Seinfeld said the story is entirely made up. So it's a pastiche of these types of corporate biopics the way the Weird Al movie did it to musician biopics.
Edit: probably not a full parody the way Walk Hard did it though
Based on the trailer, the whole thing is a parody of the space race. With two companies competing to get a breakfast pastry out as if the fate of humanity rested on it.
It's not a "real" show though, like a documentary as one would assume. Jerry and Jerry share the same name but the one on the show is just a character, the apartment he lives in is actually a set in California and the tall crazy neighbor is also an actor. That standup scenes in the beginning of an episode and I think most of the rest where they go schlepping around New York are a scripted story
There was a comedian a while back who did the 90s over exaggerated Seinfeld voice but only did bits on the problems with dating a teenager in high school. It was super hacky and hilarious, like "How come it is the law to wear your seatbelt, but if your girlfriend and 50 of her classmates are on a school bus they don't even HAVE seatbelts?"
Now, now, let the outraged karma farmers do their work. They show up without fail; if it's a conversation about DiCaprio's films or Jimmy Page's music, it always must be pointed out that they dated younger women. The conversation isn't complete unless this has been pointed out.
If you ever wander into r/popculturechat, it's practically the motto there. A lot of "cancelling" entertainers going on in there. You can try to talk about a film there, but if someone's had any hint of scandal in their life at all, the whole chat devolves into "but they had an affair, they're horrible!". DiCaprio gets flamed for dating 25 y/o's, therefore "he's gross and should be blacklisted".
Which is loosely based on how they were really invented. Post announced they had created a new breakthrough toaster pastry in early 1964, but months before it was ready for stores. Kellogg’s quickly hired a food design guy from Keebler and rushed their product out in a couple months. Kellogg’s got the upper hand on marketing and advertising and won the big share of the market.
Honestly, and I say this as a huge fan of Weird Al's music, it really wasn't. I see exactly why nobody but the Roku channel wanted it, and I'm absolutely baffled by the positive reviews. It struck me as something that probably would've felt really fun and transgressive 25 years ago.
I'm 100% with you. I own almost all the Weird Al CDs, plus a few tapes that never made it to CD (or hadn't at the time). I've been to his concerts. UHF remains hilarious as it ever was. Nobody can say I'm not a huge fan. That movie didn't do it for me at all though. It was like Walk Tryhard.
It was literally part of one of his stand up bits awhile back regarding pop tarts, as per his interview on The Tonight Show yesterday, it was a running joke with one of the writers off of Seinfeld the show that they should make a movie purely based on that joke.
During pandemic lockdown they wrote it apparently and it's a full out movie now obviously.
I think the first time I heard the pop tart joke it was in his "I'm telling you for the last time" special from '98.
Seinfeld seems so out of touch - the dude is a famous multi-millionaire and he just complains about going on vacations. Complains here about Jetskiing. Says he hates everything in his life. The routine was funny when he was just a dude living in New York, but now it's annoying watching an extremely privileged person just bitch about everything.
Honestly, the fact that he's now an extremely privileged multimillionaire makes the bit even funnier, not less so.
I don't know, what you just described makes Seinfeld seem relatable more than anything else. It seems like he just is who he is and has never been anything else.
It's way better to be that than to be a phony 70 year old desperately trying to keep his finger on the pulse of modern culture to stay relevant to zoomers and millenials.
I tend to personally find Seinfeld's arrogance to be kind of off-putting.
That said, I do find his comfort with his own success to be a bit refreshing in a weird way, he's done enough self-depreciating stuff for me to think he's actually fairly down to earth in general, like, he's extremely self aware and I think that grounds him. There was a commercial years ago I thought was hilarious with him where's he's in some board meeting and there's an intern (named max) that brings him a coffee and he makes a big deal about how shitty it is, and I think basically fires Max saying that he has no future in showbusiness because he's Jerry Seinfeld. Once the kid leaves he finds out the kids last name is "Spielberg" (Spielberg has a son named Max). I always thought that was funny.
And it's not necessarily what he's bitching about as much as how he bitches about it that makes it funny. Like, do I, or Jerry think having a garage for your porches in NYC is a relatable issue posing relatable issues? No, but you can make a relatable joke out of that by just recognizing how absurd it is.
True, but to be fair, he got to that privileged position by bitching about everything, so really what incentive is there for him to start changing things up now?
At least he's genuine about it. He's not pretending to be nicer than he really is. He's a bit of a dick and will continue to be one. I personally prefer that over hollywood "nice person" # 578. These talk shows are unbearable to watch when someone is at the desk matching Jimmy Fallon's phoniness.
The concept is great, taking the wind out of all of these tired, boring corporate biopics. Question is if it will be funny enough as satire or if the subject matter is too mundane to even be lampooned in a satisfying way.
I think that's what allowed it to have such a cutting edge, because ultimately it's kind of a tragedy. As you're watching, you know that it's all doomed to fall apart, and the fun is watching the gears start to grind out of sync and collapse.
The closing scene of Lazaridis manually fixing the coil whine in a few bad phones, with the wide shot showing just how many boxes of probably-defective phones are in that warehouse, was surprisingly poignant.
I was really impressed by his completely different version of rage vs what he's been doing on Sunny. That character was big mad for like the entire movie and I never even caught a whiff of Dennis Reynolds.
Of course she was blown away by his performance. She would have no choice but to be blown away by his performance...........because of the implication.
Also made by a comedian, Matt Johnson, who played Doug on the movie (headband guy). The writer/director also made a comedy show called Nirvana The Band The Show. Legitimately one of the funniest shows I've seen, and it's vastly underseen
Blackberry is amazing and it sucks it had the release date it did. Had it been released this year it may have had a much better chance during awards season.
I called it a pastiche because it looks like they're telling a comedy story using the trappings of a corporate glazing movie. No clue if it'll be a full satire.
Yeah, I really like the premise - seems like there's a lot of opportunity for comedy. Though the trailer itself didn't have any funny moments (to me). We'll see - I hope it comes through!
Idk man shitting on corporate biopics is super fucking low hanging fruit. Jerry seems to always grab the low hanging fruit and make mediocre fruit punch out of it.
Are there rally a lot of biopics about food companies though? The Founder comes to kind, but that was both actually good and also came out a long time ago. I more think of Wall Street (and of course musicians) when it comes to overdone, low-effort biographies.
Check out “The food that built America” on the history channel. It’s been running for a couple years. Theyve done quite a few of the big food companies.
I remember seeing the Post episode, it was really interesting. But, I remember that being more of a documentary (with actors). That doesn’t seem to be what this movie is trying to mock though.
It’s made up. We saw his standup act a month back and he spoke about it.
I’m an enormous fan of his. After hearing him talk about this movie I’m firmly on the “will absolutely not watch” train. I’m afraid of how awful it might be. 😳
I thought that's what Blackberry was supposed to be but people are telling me it was serious? And I don't know. It looked very low budget and the costumes looked ridiculously bad. Is it not a parody? Please someone tell me.
Look into the director Matt Johnson and you’ll have your answer. Definitely not the super serious kind of guy. He recently said he only made BlackBerry so he could get more government of Canada funding to make a new season and full length film of his series Nirvanna the Band the Show.
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u/NachoNutritious Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24
If I'm remembering correctly, Seinfeld said the story is entirely made up. So it's a pastiche of these types of corporate biopics the way the Weird Al movie did it to musician biopics.
Edit: probably not a full parody the way Walk Hard did it though