The problem is not even with the casting of Seth Rogen in both parts - as Herschel, the bearded Jewish emigrant with a heavy Eastern European accent, and as Ben, the hipster great nephew who has to reintroduce him to the world. Or not entirely: Rogen has his detractors, partly because he so often plays loudmouths, but that has taken him a long way in new era of brutal R-rated comedy.

He has moved into a groove that has worked well for many outsized character-acting comedians. Jackie Gleason and John Goodman come to mind - they often played brash everymen who said whatever they were thinking, without self-censorship. Rogen is Canadian, like many great "American" comics. That gives him a certain edge, an outsider’s clarity on America and its excesses. John Candy, Dan Aykroyd, Jim Carrey - all Canucks. They all passed as Americans, but their comedy was sharper because they were not.

That’s certainly required for Rogen’s double role here. The satire is not about America’s past, but its crazy present. Herschel is driven by an emigrant’s boundless energy and ambition, once he decides his goal. He will become rich so that he can buy the block of cemetery land where his beloved wife Sara (Sarah Snook, underused) now lies. It borders a freeway and "cossacks" have put up an advertising board for vodka. Ben’s parents are buried in the same shabby corner, but he has no sense of outrage. He has lost his feeling for family, tradition, even religion. Herschel finds him a disappointment - and they part on bitter terms.

The argument between them allows the script to go into the speed with which reputations can now be made and lost on social media; the way trends are now a matter of minutes, not months; the waste of modern life, compared to that of one 100 years ago, when people repaired and recycled; the deregulation of jobs where interns don’t get paid. "Like slaves?" asks Herschel, confused by the concept.

The problem with many comedies is they have nothing to say. The other problem is some have too much. This one has so much on its mind, the impact becomes less. One minute it’s a film about what we’ve lost as a culture; the next, it’s making jokes about the rise of lies and stupidity as political discourse. "If one thing true in America, you say terrible things, you will never be success," remarks Herschel, after a bruising on social media. "That is not true at all," says Ben - and we all nod sagely.

That might be the line that begat the whole project, but satire in the era of Trump has to be tougher than this. Trump has made the news seem like satire. And in any case, political satire is often better suited to shorter forms of comedy, like Saturday Night Live, where Simon Rich used to work as a writer. An American Pickle is far from a disaster, but it is more amusing than hilarious. It is that thing a comedy can never be - only half good.