A Jewish Sour Pickle: ‘Too Much Seth Rogen’

The actor’s new movie “An American Pickle” has already received mixed reviews in the American press. Recently, Rogen stated that “Israel is based on lies.”

The new movie starring Seth Rogen, which came out this week, is called “An American Pickle,” a kind of play on words between the literal denotation of “pickle” and the metaphorical meaning which refers to complicated events or an unpleasant situation. Judging by the reviews in light of the statements Rogen made in a recent interview to promote the movie, it’s very possible that he himself is “in a pickle.”

In this comedy, which was directed by Brandon Trost and will be released in another two days as the first original movie made by the streaming service HBO, Rogen plays two characters. One is Herschel Greenbaum, a Jewish immigrant to the United States in the 1920s who falls into a vat of brine in the pickle factory where he works—and as a result is pickled (yes, you heard right) for 100 years. When he wakes up in modern, hipster Brooklyn, he realizes that he has not aged at all, but his only relative in the world is his great-grandson, Ben Greenbaum, a millennial, who is also played by Rogen. The movie is based on the dynamic between the two, and was defined by the actor in promotional interviews as “the most Jewish movie” that he has ever participated in.

The plot of the movie is based on a short story entitled “Sell Out” by Simon Rich, which won praise when it was published in 2013. The movie (or streaming version) has received mixed reviews.

Variety magazine is treating the movie as if it’s a relic from the 1980s, similar to movies like “Splash,” “Coming to America” and “Kindergarten Cop,” where the heroes find themselves like fish out of water in a new, unnatural environment. Nevertheless, as was stated in one negative review, the release of a movie like this in the year 2020 only emphasizes how irrelevant this genre is today. The result is a film which is “too cantankerous to be funny and too preposterous to believe.” That reviewer also noted that aside from some superficial, secondary characters, “the only real characters in [the movie] are Herschel and Ben. And that, frankly, is a lot of Seth Rogen for any one movie.”

The website Wired also has chosen to focus on the movie only belatedly, with a review whose title claims that it “might have been fresher in the 2010s.”

The article notes that many of the jokes in the movie are criticisms directed at the millennial generation, but in the story, they are directed toward habits of American students which actually belong these days to generation Z. “The experience of watching ‘An American Pickle’ is more akin to stumbling on a lost Apatow project from the 2010s than it is watching something made for 2020.” Written in a fairly negative tone, the review finishes with, “It’s a movie about a man adjusting to living in a modern world that feels like it came from another era.”

The Guardian, on the other hand, gave the movie three stars and described it as a “funny piece of writing [that] has become a funny film” and a “tasty, insubstantial snack of a comedy.”

The Hollywood Reporter called it a “disarming celebration of Jewish identity” with funny parts but found many flaws in the film, among them “conflicts that feel forced and not always true to the characters.” The Reporter review also said that at a certain point the screenplay gets sloppy, but still, even though it is “neither the most substantial nor the most sophisticated comedy,” but its charm helps it to overcome its flaws.

A few days ago, Rogen was interviewed on a podcast by radio personality Mark Maron, and he spoke about his Jewish identity. He spoke about the “misinformation” about Israel which he was raised with in his youth and wondered why it would be necessary to have so many Jews concentrated in one place. His comments raised a media storm. The chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Isaac “Bougie” Herzog, got involved and spoke with Rogen about what he had said.

As a result, the actor clarified that he had made his remarks in jest, and he supports the right of Israel to exist — but he did not retract the remarks he made about his Jewish education. He emphasized that he was not apologizing for what he said, but that his comments were taken out of context. He added that he is aware of the sensitivity that exists around the subject of the Jewish state. If we had to guess, when the movie is released to theaters in Israel, it will probably be called “A Sour Story.”