‘The Pickup’ Review – This Is One Of the Worst Things Eddie Murphy Has Done, and He Knows It

Almost everything you need to know about The Pickup is that it has Eddie Murphy, one of comedy’s all-time icons, play the straight man to Pete Davidson. And I like Pete Davidson! But let’s be real here. You cast Murphy in a movie because the sheer force of his charisma can elevate even ridiculously bad material. It doesn’t matter if you slather him in prosthetics or tether him to a pointless sequel; he’ll do what he does. Except here, in Prime Video’s miserable heist caper, where he’s older, fed up, and dying to get home – and I’m not talking about his character.

For what it’s worth, that character is Russell Pierce, a driver for an armoured car company who’s on the cusp of a career change and can’t wait to cut out the early starts and spend some time in bed with his wife, Natalie (Eva Longoria, who between this and War of the Worlds is having a truly terrible month on Amazon). Russell’s that guy you sometimes get in movies like this, who keeps talking about imminently leaving the job and getting home to his wife in time for their anniversary party. It’s usually a death sentence for a supporting character, but Russell’s the co-lead, so you never have to worry that anything will happen to him.

Murphy played an older guy in the misguided but ultimately okay comedy You People for Netflix, but that was pretty explicitly about how his attitude was outdated, and Murphy knew what was funny about it. The Pickup is a very different movie, and Murphy knows there’s nothing funny about it, the odd line here and there notwithstanding. Most of the comedy in this action-comedy is delivered by Davidson, who plays Russell’s doofus new partner, Travis. It’s the same knockabout stoner role that Davidson always plays, but this time in a semi-serious environment where his trademark idiocy manages to arm a would-be thief with detailed information about him and Russell’s route.

The thief is Zoe (Keke Palmer, a great talent totally wasted here), who needs Russell and Travis’s armored truck for a bigger heist that, through a convoluted set of events, comes to involve Russell and Travis as reluctant co-conspirators. Imagine Ocean’s 11 if nobody mentioned a heist until halfway through. The structure totally kills what’s typically enjoyable about a heist story, and what we’re left with is an incredibly silly romance between Travis and Zoe that feels more reliant on real-life gossip than the efforts of the script from Kevin Burrows and Matt Mider, who, for what it’s worth, are best known for the Gentlemen Lobsters web series.

The Pickup would have been more acceptable if it had committed to the action over the comedy, but it doesn’t do that either. There is action, sure, but it’s workmanlike business handled primarily through stunt doubles, which is perhaps understandable given the cast comprises comedians, one of whom is 64. But the lack of interest here is reflective of the lack of interest everywhere. Nobody involved in this movie seems to have been interested in it being anything other than an excuse for Pete Davidson to play himself for 90 minutes. It’s a criminal waste of the other comedy talent involved.

The Pickup isn’t quite as egregiously incompetent as the aforementioned War of the Worlds, I’ll give it that; it’s less outright terrible than frustratingly inert and unambitious. Somehow, though, I think that’s worse in certain respects, less respectful of the audience’s time and intelligence, and more egregiously wasteful of the obviously talented actors involved. You go into a movie like that expecting a disaster, but you go into one like this expecting a half-decent time. In the end, the only thing stolen is 90 minutes of your life.