An American Pickle Review

The first half is close to wonderful. Brandon Trost, a cinematographer directing, shoots the 1919 prologue like a silent picture and finds real feeling in Herschel's arrival into a world where everyone he loved is a name on a stone. Rogen plays both roles and the dual performance is the most praised element, particularly the way Ben's exhaustion and Herschel's certainty come from the same face without either becoming a caricature. Simon Rich adapts his own novella and the early jokes about seltzer, gravestones and startup vocabulary are precise.

Then the film changes subject. The middle becomes a broad satire of viral outrage and internet politics that critics found dated on arrival and much less interesting than the family story it interrupts, the tone swings without warning, and the reconciliation is rushed into the last ten minutes after an hour of separation. At under ninety minutes it still feels padded in the wrong places. What survives is the ending, which returns the two men to a grave and is genuinely moving. The film around it never settles.