Metacritic reviews

This one’s more than one kind of comedy, too. It’s a sweet yet nicely vinegary immigration fable; a deadpan fantasy; and a tale of two Brooklyns, one (1920) a repository of rat-infested factories and Eastern European Jewish immigrants, the other (2020) the gentrified land of their progressive, pea milk-drinking great-grandchildren.

While Rich’s script misses a few trickier opportunities to further dig into questions of religion and history – Herschel sleeps his way through the entirety of the Second World War, yet there’s never any discussion of how the Holocaust has irrevocably changed the world he wakes up in – An American Pickle is a movie that your bubbe will love.

An American Pickle uses arguably the dumbest concept imaginable to tell a surprisingly tender story about intergenerational pain, legacy, family, forgiveness, American division, Jewish heritage and the importance of family roots.

An American Pickle is neither the most substantial nor the most sophisticated comedy, but its soulful sweetness outweighs its flaws.

All in all, An American Pickle is a solidly entertaining comedy. Its oddball conceit dares audiences to take the plunge, and Seth Rogen rewards them with Herschel, who is bold, thrilling, and a little bit bonkers.

An American Pickle is cute — nothing more, nothing less. It’s not laugh-out-loud funny; it’s folksy funny. This is chicken soup for the soul, arriving at a time when Americans could use a balmy parable on family and tradition.

Rogen’s comedies have often layered broad laughs with humanity and thematic ambition. Here, like Herschel and Ben, they aren’t especially convincing sharing the frame.

There are some scattered laughs but it's not particularly funny, and American Pickle is generally all over the place, aiming to be an abstract comedy about family and religion but losing its way trying to also poke fun at modern culture.

An American Pickle is the kind of movie that never quite decides what it wants to be. Pick a lane, as they say. Otherwise, you’re all over the place.

Of course, the essence of the fish-out-of-water comedy is that it’s never been a realistic genre — it’s pure Hollywood fantasy. Yet An American Pickle, in its ethnically satirical and scattered way, lacks the integrity of its own ridiculousness. It’s pungent but flavorless: an unkosher dill.