An American Pickle is a film about two lookalike relatives who are separated by a hundred years andcan’t resolve their generational differences. This seems like a fun time, right? These kinds of films – ones where a person from the past finds themselves adrift in modern society like Encino Man and The Visitors – are usually great. An American Pickle is unfortunately not. Adapted by Simon Rich, the creator of TBS’s comedy anthology Miracle Workers, from his own short story “Sell Out,” and directed by Brandon Trost, who is a rather good cinematographer, An American Pickle has some fine moments tucked into its uneven structure, even if its conflicted tone holds it back from true greatness.
The film opens in the “old country” of Schlupsk, a comically miserable Russian Jewish peasant village densely populated by Fiddler On the Roof ripoffs. The opening sequences definitely are Simon Rich’s creation, and would be right at home as Miracle Workers: The Old Country. There, Herschel Grinbraum (Seth Rogen) woos Sara (Sarah Snook), and after a post-wedding pogrom, the couple emigrates to America, where Herschel finds work in a pickle factory. While killing rats one day, Herschel falls into a brining vat, in full view of everyone in the factory though no one even notices before sealing the vat (a brutally efficient observation of the callousness of American working life). One hundred years later, Herschel is resurrected in modern-day Brooklyn, and in the last touch that feels very Simon Rich, the film skips completely over the justification for this improbable plot point, saying only that the “scientists’ explanation satisfied everybody.” This is also the only “good” laugh-out-loud moment in the film. If you’re looking for a broad Rogen comedy, the thing I and everyone else was expecting from the film’s premise, then this isn’t it. Rogen’s performance is more in line with the work he does in comedy-dramas like Long Shot (which he genuinely surprised me in) and Funny People, or full-on dramas like Steve Jobs.
In the present day, Herschel is connected with his last living relative, a programmer named Ben Greenbaum (also Seth Rogen). To Herschel, Ben seems wildly successful—he has a nice apartment, twenty-five pairs of socks, and can make his own seltzer water on command. The two quickly fall out, as Herschel’s antics cost Ben a major job opportunity, and here is where the film begins to split into two movies. One is a broad comedy about inter-generational rivals trying to destroy each other, with the younger person consistently wielding modern social mores and performative online culture against the older person. The film doesn’t really have anything to say about cancel culture, it’s just that Ben keeps using it against Herschel, whose views, “normal” for the early 20th Century, are now obviously and universally abhorrent. The other film is a much better, more nuanced film about family and connection, specifically how grief and religion can hold fractured families together when there is no other common ground. Beyond their linked DNA, Ben and Herschel have nothing in common and little understanding between them. But Ben is an orphan, and everyone Herschel knew is dead, so their grief becomes their common ground. Modern, closed-off Ben, however, is unwilling to share his grief with Herschel, which is when things start to go wrong between them. At the end of the film, they reconnect and there is a lovely notion of religious ritual providing comfort even if belief has faded. Once Ben and Herschel can connect on this level, they find tolerance for one another.
Like the Greenbaums, An American Pickle is at war with itself and can’t quite overcome its own split personality. It’s both a broad comedy and a poignant family drama at once, and the film never really resolves its intent, resulting in an uneven story all about family, the generational gap, grief, and cancel culture.
An American Pickle is good, but it would benefit from choosing a path – being either a broad comedy about an escalating prank war, or a dramedy about faith and family. It can’t be everything. Any film that tries to be everything sinks more than it swims, and this one is no exception. It serves neither impulse well, and the finer elements of the dramedy are lost in the broad comedy and its somewhat dark humor. When the film is just about Ben and Herschel trying to relate, it’s actually quite lovely. When, however, it’s about Ben trying to sabotage Herschel, it becomes a slightly more absurd and taboo version of Rogen’s typical comedy shtick. Rogen is great in both roles, but it feels like studio notes forced some bad beats into the story which bring it down a few notches. It’s worth checking out the opening scene, and to watch Miracle Workers if you like what you see there, but otherwise, I concur that An American Pickle is as much of a hodgepodge as the pickles featured in it. And that’s a shame, because as a fan of Rogen and Rich, I expected so much more from this.
2.5/5 STARS