Seth rogen

Funny, savvy, starry: The Invite reviewed

The Invite is a dramedy from the dinner-party-gone-awry genre about a marriage and whether a sex party might save it – or will it make it go boom? It’s extremely savvy, very funny and packs an emotional punch. It stars Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton – and if there is more pleasure to be had than watching great actors behaving badly, I would genuinely wish to know about it. If there is more pleasure to be had than watching great actors behaving badly, I would wish to know about it It opens with a quote from Oscar Wilde: ‘One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.’ (Wilde obviously didn’t know about the tax advantages.) Joe and Angela’s marriage is hanging by a thread.

The superficial edginess of the Emmys and The Studio

From our US edition

When I previewed the 2025 Emmys in July, I wrote “it must feel pretty good to be Seth Rogen today.” His Hollywood satire, The Studio, had been nominated for a mighty 23 Emmy awards, and Rogen himself was up for acting, writing and directing. Well, today it must feel even better to be Seth Rogen. The show trampled over its competition to win a hugely impressive 13 awards – the most ever won by a comedy in a single season, let alone a debuting one – and Rogen himself won Best Actor, Best Director (for the self-consciously tricksy one-shot episode "The Oner”) and shared the Best Writing award with Evan Goldberg, Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory and Frida Perez.

emmys

Seth Rogen’s Jewish problem

From our US edition

The discourse has reached a sufficient pitch of sophistication that in order to comprehend the state of Jewish life in the US — and that means the state of anti-Semitism in the US — we must consider the thoroughly modern morality tale that is the story of Seth Rogen, Eve Barlow and the ‘fart’ emoji. Those fortunate enough to be spared a daily bath in the sewers of Twitter may need to be filled in. Seth Rogen is to comedy as Chapo Trap House is to Henry Kissinger: a kind of stoned, dirtbag antidote to adulthood. He specializes in depicting that saddest of American male specimens, the pot-smoking, pot-bellied, moob-stricken man-child.

seth rogen

Heavy-handed satire and schmaltz: American Pickle reviewed

American Pickle is a comedy based on a short story by Simon Rich, originally published in the New Yorker, and I was sold on the synopsis alone: ‘An eastern European Jew falls into a vat of pickles and is brined for 100 years before emerging in modern-day Brooklyn.’ It’ll be a fish-out-of-water film like Crocodile Dundee, I thought. But more Jewish. And it felt like I’d been waiting all my life for a film like Crocodile Dundee, but more Jewish. In fact, where have the more Jewish versions of Crocodile Dundee been until now? You think: an entire factory left un-redeveloped for 100 years? It’s prime real estate, isn’t it? But.