Review Roundup: AN AMERICAN PICKLE, Starring Seth Rogen - What Are the Critics Saying?

An American Pickle, starring Seth Rogen in two roles, has been released on HBO Max.

An American Pickle is a 2020 American comedy film directed by Brandon Trost (in his solo directorial debut) and written by Simon Rich, based on his 2013 short story Sell Out.

The film stars Rogen as an Ashkenazi Jew in the 1920s who gets preserved in a vat of pickles and wakes up in modern-day New York City, and attempts to fit in with the assistance of his last remaining descendent (also played by Rogen). Sarah Snook and Jorma Taccone also star.

Let's see what the critics are saying...

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Stephanie Zacharek, Time: An American Pickle has an acidic zing that neutralizes any sentimentality. Rogen has a great feel for Yiddish humor, for its lilting rhythms and its joy, but also for its bleakness. But Rogen can carry the movie's more serious threads too: while Ben claims that he's not religious, he comes to understand that even among the non-observant, religion can be the thread that connects families through centuries. Rogen, Trost and Rich have a sense of how ridiculous, and sometimes punishing, life can seem, in 1919 or in 2020. Yet even without the advantage of being preserved in brine, we get through the madness. L'chaim.

Lindsey Bahr, AP: "An American Pickle" is a little more serious and a little more heartfelt than you might expect from a Rogen joint. Based on a short story by humorist Simon Rich, who also wrote the script, it's a classic fish out of water (or pickle juice) tale that THE MOVIES have always loved. In Hollywood, there's always room for an old timey character encountering a modern automobile scene.

Richard Brody, New Yorker: "An American Pickle" is framed as a picaresque adventure, and it touches on details of contemporary life only in order to lampoon their peculiarities. The satirical light that Herschel's perspective brings to bear on current events is narrowly focussed and dim with sentiment and piety, nodding at "Fiddler on the Roof." Instead, the movie breezes by the manifold specifics of current affairs that it references in order to reach the small set of points it is most interested in underscoring.

Brian Lowry, CNN: Seth Rogen plays a double role in "An American Pickle," an HBO Max movie that's a little sweet, a little sour and a whole lot silly. Built around the "Sleeper"-like premise of a man perfectly preserved for 100 years, this adaptation of Simon Rich's novella has some fun contemplating how the modern world would like to a 20th-century immigrant, before scraping the barrel for deeper themes.

A.O. Scott, The New York Times: It's not too salty or too sour, and it's neither self-consciously artisanal nor aggressively, weirdly authentic. The subject, more or less, is what it means to be Jewish, and given how contentious that topic can become - can I get an oy vey? - the movie finds an agreeable, occasionally touching vein of humor.

Clarisse Loughrey, Independent: Trost's film illuminates a past where daily hardships are soothed through ritual and routine, and a present where the illusion of total freedom gives way to disconnect and uncertainty. Grief has its place in both worlds. An American Pickle is finely attuned to both the Jewish and wider immigrant experience, but it's interested also in how we're all bound by one commonality - we are all vessels for the memories of those long gone.

K. Austin Collins, Vanity Fair: But An American Pickle massages all the life and spice and danger out of jokes like these in favor of comparatively flavorless sentiment and reconciliation. Sure, I still laughed. But as I did, I wondered why the movie insisted on low-balling itself. I wondered why the range of strange encounters and insults and cultural displacement it offers felt so minimally-imagined. The movie is set in the historically Jewish neighborhood of Williamsburg. Surely we have more available to us, in such a set-up, than repurposed garbage comedy.

Adam Rosenberg, Mashable: In some ways, An American Pickle is exactly the kind of stoner comedy that Rogen has built a brand around. The absurdist sense of humor is tonally in the same place even in the absence of weed. But Rogen notably neither wrote nor directed this one, and it shows. Simon Rich, who based his script on his short story "Sell Out," employs a dark and sometimes sadistic edge in the central conflict that doesn't really jive with Rogen's usual schtick.

Owen Gleiberman, Variety: Of course, the essence of the fish-out-of-water comedy is that it's never been a realistic genre - it's pure Hollywood fantasy. Yet "An American Pickle," in its ethnically satirical and scattered way, lacks the integrity of its own ridiculousness. It's pungent but flavorless: an unkosher dill.

Peter Travers, The Rolling Stone: Though the star's affinity for new talent is admirable, the sudden shifts in tone and the arid dead spots give this movie a shapelessness that challenges your attention instead of rewarding it. Still, a movie that even glancingly grapples with questions of ethnic and spiritual identity, past and present, is hardly hack work. It'll do in a pickle.

Charlotte O'Sullivan, Evening Standard: It's true the script could be tighter, and bolder - modern-day racism and anti-Semitism are ignored. And there's a scene in a makeshift synagogue that is somewhat sappy.

While professional child-man Rogen is amusing as Ben, he's downright glorious as Herschel. Clearly relishing the opportunity to play a devout, conservative "adult", Rogen also has a whale of a time with Herschel's accent (Herschel, like Borat, mangles the English language with impatient gusto).

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