An American Pickle (2020)
Directed by Brandon Trost
An immigrant worker at a pickle factory is accidentally preserved for 100 years and wakes up in modern day Brooklyn. He learns his only surviving relative is his great grandson, a computer coder who he can’t connect with.
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What critics compared An American Pickle to
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
Directed by Larry Charles
Plot Themes
Absurd premise aside (admittedly it’s what hooked me in the first place), on the surface An American Pickle plays out as an amusing combination of time-travelling mishaps and fish out of water comedy, much like Borat and Coming to America .
In the movie “Borat,” the title character, Borat Sagiyev, wanders to the U.S. from the Kazakh backwaters to interview people in the modern U.S. In David Mamet’s “Homicide” (1991), Bobby Gold (Joe Mantegna), a police detective investigating a murder that takes place within an Orthodox Jewish community, is criticized by a Hasidic Jew for being secular, the latter wondering whether there is anything spiritually real in a cop who does not embrace his religion.
Rogen’s phlegmy, Borat -esque narration and glib deadpan as Herschel (“Sometimes when we want to be alone, we go to very special bog”) works beautifully, especially when paired with director Brandon Trost (making his solo directing debut after working as cinematographer on Popstar , The Disaster Artist, The Interview , etc), whose flair for detail turns the broad comedy of Rogen’s goofy narration into pointed stylistic parody.
I was expecting something along the lines of Adam Sandler in Jack and Jill, but what I got instead is reminiscent of Nic Cage in Adaptation.
Fortunately this is Seth Rogen’s Nutty Professor, not his Jack and Jill , because he plays a dual role.