The star’s new movie with Sarah Snook is deliciously silly
The actor plays both leads in this salty time-travel comedy about a man preserved in a huge vat of brine
An American Pickle
Cert 12A, 90 mins
★★★★✩
IN THIS fish-out-of-water comedy there are two big parts and both of them are played by Seth Rogen. If you’re thinking: “Jeez, one of him’s bad enough,” this probably isn’t the film for you.
Simon Rich’s script is based on his own short story Sell Out, a hilarious yarn told from the point of view of a beleaguered Jew, Herschel Greenbaum. Having escaped pogroms in Eastern
Europe, Herschel moves to Brooklyn, where he spends his days clubbing rats to death in a pickle factory, before accidentally becoming trapped in a vat of brine in which he is gently preserved. That happens in 1920. One hundred years later, he’s rescued from said vat and moves in with his one living relative — a great-grandson, Simon, based in Brooklyn.
The story has been tweaked. The greatgrandson is no longer a well-off scriptwriter, instead, he’s a dweeby app designer and his name is Ben (poor Ben: his parents recently died in a crash and his career has stalled). But the core conflict remains the same. Unlike Herschel, Ben’s not fussed about religion (he notes, cheerfully, “I had a Jumanji-themed bar mitzvah!”) and he’s a flibbertigibbet.
When Herschel visits the grave of his beloved wife Sarah (Sarah Snook), Ben takes out his phone and scrolls through photos of canoodling pets. Naturally, Herschel, is frustrated. He squared off with rats for this?
Before long, Herschel and Ben are locked into a semi-Oedipal battle of wits. Herschel, determined to make the Greenbaum name synonymous with success, starts up a pickle business, which the insecure and increasingly jealous Ben does everything he can to sabotage.
While professional child-man Rogen
Rogen has a whale of a time with Herschel’s accent.
Like Borat, he mangles English with impatient gusto
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).
This middle section works as a parable for our times. Herschel’s business thrives initially, because patronising hipsters mistake his ruthless monomania for adorable left-field pluck. Ironically, he’s just as popular with Rightwingers, who — delighted by his oldeworld bigotry and excitable personality — encourage him to enter politics. We get a glimpse of the web headline “Kanye West Defends Herschel Greenbaum’s
Right to Offend”. Given the pickle Kanye’s in right now, that gag really hits the spot.
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.
In the 2015 comedy The Night Before, Rogen’s character pukes during Midnight Mass. Personally, I prefer puking to piety. Still, just when you think An American Pickle has sold out, a mid-credits clip shows Herschel and Ben watching Yentl and the result is bliss. This is more of an appetiser than a main meal, but it’s still dill-ish.
On general release