So I was expecting something humorous and in part it was, but I guess my idea is family is more supportive. Then I realized it was from a short story, which I think if I knew that going in, it would have been better. So yes from a short story and then I would probably give it a 7. Maybe I'm not keen on the politics ish either, not direct but you'll get it is you watch it. Points well taken and almost a requirement with Seth Rogan, so should've expected that also. Not one of his best but worth a watch on a rainy afternoon.

This was just so very mediocre, it's like a short Youtube sketch but stretched out to be whole movie. I'd expect this of a new "up and coming" indie film maker, maybe, but not Seth. Guess it was a little pet-project of his about family and religion. They didn't even need to go all out on the whole time travel, and could have just made it about finding a long lost cousin from some looked-over country. Cute but blah.

An American Pickle is a fairly silly comedy, but it also has something likable about it. It starts from an absurd idea —an immigrant is preserved for a hundred years in a pickle vat and wakes up in present-day Brooklyn— and handles it with a mixture of goofy humor, generational clash, family tenderness and a bit of sharpness. It is not a great film, but it is pleasant to watch. The best thing is the contrast between Seth Rogen’s two characters. Herschel comes from another world: he is rough, old-fashioned, hardworking, stubborn, full of prejudices and driven by a very basic idea of family, honor and effort. Ben, his great-grandson, is the opposite: modern, insecure, technological, lonely and lost in a life that is much more comfortable, but also much emptier. The film works when it confronts those two ways of understanding the world. Some jokes work precisely because they are so simple. The clash between a man from the early twentieth century and today’s sensitivities gives the film several funny moments, some very silly and others with more bite. The film laughs at nostalgia, modernity, social media, entrepreneurs, social correctness and also the tendency to turn anything into identity, offense or business. Seth Rogen carries almost everything. He is not always inside a perfectly tuned comedy, but he has timing and knows how to give humanity even to a ridiculous premise. Herschel could have been only a caricature, and Ben just another standard sad millennial, but between them something more interesting appears: a story about family, roots, inheritance and the difficulty of reconciling yourself with what you have lost. The problem is that An American Pickle does not always know what kind of film it wants to be. At times it seems like a fairly acidic satire; at others, a sentimental comedy about family grief; at others, an absurd fable about Jewish identity, capitalism and cultural clash. That mix has charm, but it also leaves the film a little halfway. It starts strongly and then gradually loses some of its spark. Still, it is entertaining. It will not go down in history, but it has a pleasant strangeness and a few ideas that are better than they first appear. It is a small, imperfect comedy, with tenderness and bite, best enjoyed without asking too much coherence or depth from it. You laugh at silly things, but sometimes those silly things have more intention behind them than it seems.

It’s better than you would expect.