Seth Rogen plays dual roles in “American Pickle” an HBO Max comedy that fizzles out in its latter half. That’s too bad, really, because Rogen, at first, grabs your attention playing Herschel Greenbaum, a ditch-digger from a 1919 Eastern European shtetl — donning a Tevye beard straight out of “Fiddler on the Roof,” Herschel falls hard for Sarah (Sarah Snook). However, their wedding is a disaster, everyone except them gets killed by the evil Cossacks. The tragedy leads them to immigrate to Ellis Island where Herschel gets a job at a pickle factory in order to support a pregnant Sarah, but only to fall into a barrel of brine and get pickled for a century.
Waking up in a world he knows nothing about, present-day Brooklyn, Herschel learns that it’s practically impossible for him to adapt to 21st-century values — this culture clash delivers the biggest laughs of the film. Herschel is treated as a modern miracle, pickle brine is the cryo cure scientists never thought existed, but that also means Herschel’s only living relative, great-grandson named Ben (a beardless Rogen), has to take care of him and show him the ropes of this Twitter-mad world. Adapting to 21st-century sensibilities turns out to be a strained affair for Herschel, what with all the smartphones, iPads, Alexa, and, yes, abundance of tap Seltzer water.
Meanwhile, Ben, whose parents died in a car crash, has been using the insurance money left for him to finance and develop an app he’s been working on for the last five years. Aimed at ethical consumerism, and close to signing a deal with a bigwig entrepreneur, Ben sees his plans destroyed by Herschel’s sheer clumsiness. Things only worsen for Ben when he sees Herschel succeeding at his artisanal pickle business, using discarded cucumbers and rainwater, with hipsters hailing him as an overnight success on social media.
So far, so good — “An American Pickle” piques our interest with this setup, Rogen is successful at playing both characters with effortless charm, but then the ideas run out and the film starts to lose its bitingly infectious spirit. Herschel and Ben become rivals, trying to outmaneuver each other, even if it means sly backstabbing, suddenly this becomes a movie about a family war with Ben, filled with jealous rage, making sure the world knows about his great-grandfather’s views on women, homosexuals, and Christianity. Gone are the culture clashes that had originally made the film such a treat, enter a mean-spiritedness that should have no place in the kind of movie.
Former Saturday Night Live writer Simon Rich is responsible for the screenplay, which would have played better as a long-form skit rather than a feature-length film. Rich runs out of ideas quickly, stranding Rogen’s indelible performance down on its path. The film is also rather long, even at just 88 minutes, but former DP, and now director, Brandon Trost’s keen visual eye (“This is the End,” “The Disaster Artist”) does show a great affinity for period detail and amicably rendered frames, ditto a clearcut love for Rogen’s inspired performance. However, tonally, the film is all over the place, never truly settling down for the kind of rewarding shape and scope that could drive such a comedy home. The material being tackled here could have made for a more thought-provoking affair, but instead, we get a film that quickly turns into a formulaic comedy. Oy vey. [C+]