What would our ancestors have thought about us if they, somehow, lived to see us today? This is the question that inspires in part the new comedy by Seth Rogen‘An American Pickle’ which is based on a rather nice short story by Simon Rich. Rich is also the one writing the picture in which the protagonist is a jew who moves to the USA and is happy to find out that in the future has one hundred years in the future his only grandson, however, an app-developer from Brooklyn seems to be a tedious comparison – a Jewish man who was out in pickles eight little visited had can you guess where. (Both are played by Rogen.) While the idea is still there but how the talent is demonstrated leaves one executed in the growing pains of the changing image of Rogen.
Starting from the 2005 film The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Rogen has typically taken on manchild roles. He’s chuckling stoner; a lost police officer; an irritated baby-daddy; an overworked husband trying to deal with Greek Life college students – Rogen knows how to incorporate the difficulties of millennial “adult” life into comedy. However, this particular shtick seems risky, especially as he approaches 40 in a few years. Hence he has started to change this pattern, playing a stubborn and eccentric but very clever speechwriter in the Long Shot romantic comedy starring Charlize Theron. In the film, An American Pickle, he depicts two roles at once: a present-day Peter who turns into a manchild who’s afraid of ambition and the loud and rude ancestor who knows that tomorrow is not given to anyone.
The plot of the film American Pickle is set in the year 1919 in the Eastern European town of Schlupsk and involves muck, salted fish and ugly Cossacks rampaging. Herschel Greenbaum (Rogen) is however, a ditch digger, but has fantasies about doing more for his wife Sarah. This woman is perfect with all her teeth, upper and lower, ‘standing’ out in potatoes. So they travel to America searching for prosperity in order to create a family, a family with power, success and seltzer. (Yes, seltzer.) A chain of remarkable events causes Hershel to be placed in a brining tank where he stays for a hundred years without any memories. When he comes back to life, it’s to a world that has changed, and though nobody recognizes him and everyone is gone, there is his great-grandson Ben Greenbaum (also Rogen) the one with the wonderful Brooklyn apartment that makes all the women envious yet habited by a lone male mourning the death of his own orbiting parents.
Though Hershel is moderately dumb-struck by the present state of affairs (like the novel ways of courtship, women being active members of the polity or perhaps the price of vegetables), the greatest shock he experiences is his descendant’s sense of priorities. Ben does not follow much in the way of Jewish practices, and has not visited the family graves for years. No family, no job. No wife, no children, and certainly no profession that should even make sense to Herschel. It follows therefore that tempers flare. Before very long, the two of them almost reach naming each other, enemies. No less annoying for her, so, Herschel sets out on his own, with a pickle cart loaded with clothes and other wares which he picked from the trash. Ben finds himself trying to figure out how to spoil his quite odd great-grandfather.
What is interesting about An American Pickle is the way Rogen v. Rogen contrasts the niches that the actor occupies at present against some that he may occupy in the future. Ben is yet another manshrugged role. At least, so goes Herschel, the man does not tick several important man milestones, namely – “throw your punch!” In some way, yes. A fight that frays Rogen in this character. Ben’s exile choke on his breath which has always been wearing wrinkles. The boy is way too helplessly entitled to be an effective manchild. Just say it out loud: Rogen has simply become tired of the archetype. Ben is, though, totally unremarkable, even with a tragic backstory. However, this is where An American Pickle hits hard.
Herschel’s bushy beard combined with his Eastern European accent and brusque bravado is an interesting character for Rogen. It is not so surprising, though, that Brooklyn hipsters, virtual addicts, and many other zealots might be attracted to Herschel with his funny pickles and his novel ideas. With this character interpretation Rogen gets the possibilities to dismiss his stoner/screw-up type of acting and get into character in a different way. Herschel is still an angry, stubborn and borderline abusive person. He is a century out of touch with the rest of the world, thinks and remarks about women in ways that do not rise above the correct way, generating/showing drama. Still, his gutsy attitude is stimulating and therefore the audience is blindsided by his every gesture, whether it is graceful or silly.
It is not difficult to picture someone like Kurt Russell or Bruce Willis embodying this character. If there is a coprorate hooligan in your story, Hershel is almost that to the tee, In an action-comedy film of the 1980s. Which is why the casting of Rogen remains the mystery and the strength of the character. Yet it is through this also pugilistic man that so many emotions are draped, where cheerfulness intersperses outbursts of unreasonable aggression or snap social awkwardness. In this character, Rogen captures the tragicomedy of existence, the one that embraces sheer happiness (adoring spouse who is obsessed with designing her husband’s headstone) and the complete heart-wrenching destruction as in a loss of numerous friends through Cossack Nolzma.
In An American Pickle, the character of Hershel if properly conceived provides effective space to the narrative. Filled with violent and ironic humor, the first act gives us this oddly captivating character and even includes some singing through such storytelling that is rude in the best possible way. That is, until Herschel meets the Ben character as played by Rich’s script, falls flat. It’s like it understands the emotional moments that need to be fulfilled but lacks the delivery of how to reach those points. Which means Rogen against Rogen in another of the needless extra pieces featuring pointless frays on religion, sadness and twitter. And there are also low strikes seeking to dismantle everything from think pieces and hipsters, through cancel culture and outbursts of Donald Trump’s Twitter account. The laughs in some of these do add comic relief to the narrative but in the end, these merely serve to veer attention from the promising main plot and the deservedly complicated main character.
The Verdict
On the whole, An American Pickle remains an intermittently funny film. Its oddball conceit urges audiences to go for it and, to their credit, Seth Rogen gives them Herschel – he is bold, exciting, and somewhat insane. While the narrative drags in the second act with ineffective humor and untamed emotion and the film lacks deftness of storytelling in the midsection, it is still a creative and clever spin on the age-old revenge story and successfully pulls off a heartwarming twist at the end. Still, the most interesting thing about this pickle is Rogen willingness to break out of this manchild stereotype and tackle more complicated, rich, and interesting comic roles.
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