BEFORE: Seth Rogen carries over from "Like Father" - and if the biggest problem with yesterday's film was not enough Seth Rogen, this one should make up for it, because it's got DOUBLE the Seth Rogen! He plays two parts in this one....
THE PLOT: An immigrant worker at a pickle factory is accidentally preserved for 100 years and wakes up in modern-day Brooklyn.
AFTER: This is, perhaps, another loose tie-in with Father's Day - since I don't exactly know when Grandparents' Day is, or even Great-Grandparents' Day, if there is one. This movie is about two men interacting, one is the great-grandfather of the other, and both played by Seth Rogen, obvi. It's one of those stunt casting ideas, they used to pull this off with split-screen camera tricks but now I think they just use special effects. I know that they basically filmed the whole movie twice, with Rogen playing the older Herschel first, then running through all the same scenes again with him playing the modern-day Ben Greenbaum, Herschel's descendant.
It's quite a coincidence that the two characters share the same last name, because that assumes only male descendants for three generations. It's even more of a coincidence that they look so much alike, because in those same three generations you would expect influence from outside non-Greenbaum DNA, and that means it would be very unlikely that Herschel and his great-grandson would resemble each other so closely. But for the movie to work the way it does, they need to feel a kinship with each other, and looking almost alike helps the audience as a constant reminder that they're related. Seriously, though, Herschel's son would only have half of his DNA, a grandson would have only a quarter, and therefore, logically, Ben would only share one-eighth of the same genes as his great-grandfather.
But this functions more as a thought experiment than anything else - a man can't be preserved in a giant pickle vat for 100 years, that's just not the way things work. How did he breathe for 100 years? Why didn't he get smaller, in the way that a cucumber gets smaller when it becomes a pickle? Now, if Herschel had gotten frozen, either cryogenically or in a block of ice like Captain America, then maybe I could believe this ridiculous notion a little more. An even bigger NITPICK POINT, though, comes from asking me to believe that the pickle factory would like dormant in Brooklyn for 100 years - that's prime industrial real estate, I could see it maybe lying fallow during, say, the Depression era, but after World War II wasn't there a manufacturing boom? Wouldn't some enterprising real estate company have sold the building to another buyer, or if not, then torn down the useless factory and put up condos there in the 1980's, or something?
Instead, two kids fly a drone into the old factory and accidentally bump the pickle vat open. This is clunky storytelling at best - was this really the easiest, best way to get somebody from 100 years ago to be alive in the present? After we had "Hot Tub Time Machine", now I'm supposed to believe in "Pickle Vat Time Machine"? It feels like a storytelling cheat just to get someone from 1920 into the modern world, just so they could be confused about cars and e-mails and the fact that racism is now bad.
Still, there are funny moments - the two men start out as newfound relatives (it's a bit of a bummer that Ben's parents are no longer alive, and that he won't talk about his feelings on this matter...) but soon get on each other's nerves. Jeez, if you think your parents can annoy you with their outdated advice, imagine interacting with your great-grandfather, who was born in the old country! This is probably accurate, he'd never shut up about the value of hard work and how back in the day they appreciated the simple values of physical labor, being poor and dying young. And then we've got the crazy kids with their internet start-ups, artisanal coffee and seltzer, and always with the selfies! Ben wants to refine his app that gives people instant advice on which products come from "ethical" companies, while Herschel decides he'll make his fortune in the pickle business - only he knows nothing about taxes, proper sanitary procedures or corporate responsibility of any kind.
In many ways, it's the same story told in "Like Father" - the two generations are at odds with each other, until they eventually realize that they're stronger working together than apart. Rather than trying to destroy each other's dreams, much more can be accomplished, perhaps, when they set their sights on the same goal, which, unfortunately, involves selling pickles to hipsters. But when you don't have a steady job, go with what you know, I guess. That's what led me back to working in a movie theater, and now I can't wait to quit and move on to something else, anything else.
Also starring Sarah Snook (last seen in "The Glass Castle"), Eliot Glazer, Jorma Taccone (last seen in "Hot Rod"), Kalen Allen, Molly Evensen, Kevin O'Rourke (last seen in "The Irishman"), Joanna P. Adler (last seen in "Can You Ever Forgive Me?"), Sean Whalen (last seen in "Jersey Boys"), Geoffrey Cantor (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Carol Leifer, Marsha Stephanie Blake (last seen in "The Wilde Wedding"), Liz Cackowski (last seen in "Wine Country"), Tim Robinson, Betsy Sodaro (last seen in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"), Michael Weaver (last seen in "The Greatest Game Ever Played"), Herb Mendelsohn, Kurt Braunohler (last seen in "Long Shot"), Raymond Neil Hernandez, Jess Stark, with archive footage of Barbra Streisand (last seen in "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead"), Mandy Patinkin (last seen in "Life Itself")
RATING: 6 out of 10 controversial tweets
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