From the man who directed Heathers and, um, 40 Days and 40 Nights, meet Flakes: an idealistic ode to following your dreams and. . . cereal? We can only guess that Flakes is so named because the action centers around a cereal bar of the same name, and not because the characters are all eccentrics or the premise itself is flaky. The story follows struggling musician-cum-restaurant manager Neal Downs (an all-grown-up-Tadpole Aaron Stanford), who presides over a run-down New-Orleans cereal restaurant and its family of wacky inhabitants. They argue over arcane cereal trivia, invoke vintage flavors like Yummy Mummy and Sir Grapefellow, and stare at Christopher Lloyd in his boxers.
Neal's alterna-girlfriend Miss Pussy Katz (Zooey Deschanel) wants Neal to finish his long-delayed album. But when an evil capitalist "Banana Republican" opens a cereal shop across the street, stealing Flakes' name and business, Neal finds yet another reason to not make music: he goes to cereal war. Pussy joins forces with the bad guy, in order to save her lover's soul and put the original Flakes out of business. Conflict kinda ensues.
The message at the heart of the film is clear: don't give your life away to a job, even if it feels easier than following your dreams. But the characters are one-dimensional talking heads, present only to spout rhetoric. The plot feels grafted onto the moral, as well (not to mention defying belief; no hipster-artist I know is so opposed to lawyers that they would let someone steal their art, or cereal restaurant). Despite a modicum of social relevance (extras were recruited from a local homeless shelter. . . to play local homeless people), the movie seems set in a strange, lifeless world far removed from reality.
While Deschanel is charming as the improbably named Pussy, and the dialogue ("It's so VH1 it makes my ass clench") and cereal shop are cute and fey, it all comes across as more fable than story. If you want a cute, snarky picture book put onscreen, you've got it here. If you wanted something deeper — even some representation of multifaceted life or complex love — you just end up with a soggy mess.
— Nicole Ankowski
