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My Review of "An American Pickle

An interesting comedy that explores the way we defeat ourselves without thinking.

By Brian AnonymousPublished 4 years ago 3 min read
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An American Pickle is a much needed new film to come out during this pandemic. It seems that there are so few movies and we're all looking for something new and luckily HBO has been listening. Although this isn't necessarily the most polished movie out there, I found that it had a few interesting themes.

This movie starts off 100 years ago with a character named Herschel. He lives in the old country in Europe and describes the life that he lives as a ditch digger. Life seems simple and he's very appreciative for everything that comes his way. Nothing has to be aesthetically pleasing and his priorities are simple. He cares about his relationship with his wife Sarah above everything else.

Through some unfortunate incident he's forced to move to America where he gets a job at a pickle factory. I like how they describe life in America being better than the old country despite showing the prominent racism that existed in America as well. The joke is that the racism isn't as bad as it was in his hometown.

He gets into an accident that left him in some pickle brine and left there for 100 years. They hilariously skip through the explanation of how this logic even works. This movie knows what it is and the audience should know as well.

Herschel finds out that he has one lone remaining relative by the name of Ben. This happens to be his great great grandson. Ben basically shows him life in modern day New York and it suddenly feels like it's going to be a fish out of water movie.

There's more to this movie than this though. It explores Herschel's perspective of how Ben lives his life. It's quite odd because we think that Ben lives a normal millennial life in New York but Herschel makes him contemplate priorities in his life.

I was also reminded of the 1984 movie called Amadeus. It was about this character named Salieri that envied the success of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Ben and Herschel's characters kind of started to remind me of the same relationship as these two characters. The sabotaging and the fact that the sabotaging didn't work all the time was very reminiscent of Amadeus. The comedy comes with all of the repercussions of the sabotaging scenes.

Still this is somewhat of a heartfelt movie and I understand the interest everyone has for this movie. For the most part I really enjoyed the movie though I did have some problems. I stated earlier that they're not supposed to get technical to explain how everything logically works. It's a comedy so we should give it some leeway. The problem is that there's a few hiccups in the pacing of this movie. I found that it jumped from issue to issue really fast without diving too deep into the character's stories.

They do dive into the character's stories but it's kind of sparse. By the end of the movie when there is some reconciliation. You know the reconciliation is going to come a mile away. I didn't really feel that connected with their relationship. I know they're not supposed to be that likable but Seth Rogan is a likable actor and he still wasn't able to get me to buy their relationship with one another. Maybe it's because I've been watching too many of these types of movies lately that I've kind of become unfazed by the cookie cutter formula they all use.

Overall, this is still an entertaining movie but still felt unpolished. That could be because they might have rushed it during the pandemic since no one has anything to watch. They did a good job because the timing of the movie is great but the quality of the movie feels a little "made for TV" quality for my liking. I still have to give this movie a 7 out of 10. I think it's worth watching but still kind of put off by the characters.

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About the Creator

Brian Anonymous

I have tons of opinions that change constantly. I watch a lot of movies and play video games. There are some articles on my struggles with languages and dance as well.

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