I had low expectations going into my app and clicking on this title. I figured I wasn’t going to like what they were selling, but I was mistaken. I actually had a good time watching this film.
“The Pickup” is, basically, a story about Zoe (Keke Palmer’s character) making a plan to rob a casino all the while using Travis (Pete Davidson’s character) as her man on the inside….although, he didn’t know he was the man on the inside. Now, you may be asking where Eddie Murphy’s character, Russ, fits into all of this because you may have seen a lot of him in the trailer. Honestly, he fits nowhere in this movie. I don’t know why we started with him or even what purpose he serves. Russ’ story is the day of this robbery and kidnapping is his 25th anniversary. He and his wife have a dream of him retiring and them opening a bed and breakfast. That’s his story. There is nothing else really. On the other hand, Zoe and Travis had interesting backstories that the movie focused on, which was fine, but I couldn’t figure out why they leaned into Russ’ character besides the fact that the character was played by Eddie Murphy.
There were three other things in this movie that ground my gears. Travis and Zoe meet at a bank in an incident that seemed, simply put, dumb. There would be no way that someone would give you a note and say, “Read it” and you assume that they are there to rob the bank. Mind you, Travis is security and not a banker, so in every movie he should have watched and referenced his moment to, he would have known that the robber always gives the note to the banker or manager. For this reason, I could not give his theatrics a pass even if I wanted to.
Another thing that ground my gears was Andrew Dice Clay. Clay is a legendary comedian, and while is performance and character were fine, I found myself wanting him to be cast to do something else. I don’t know. Make him someone Zoe reported to or had to give a cut of the money to. I wanted him to be bigger and not so much of a side character.
As a honorable mention, I also didn’t quite need Natalie (Eva Longoria’s character). Russ and Nat’s love story just wasn’t enough to make it so we needed her at the end of the film.
The last thing that ground my gears was the shoehorned love story between Zoe and Travis. I cannot tell you how much that annoyed me. I get love at first sight but it was not framed that way in this movie. It was blatantly obvious that they played into this for comedy, but the problem was it wasn’t that funny. It just seemed ridiculous.
Here’s what I loved. Even though Russ was thrust into a main character role when he should have been a supporting character, I do love him progression in the movie. He goes from a curmudgeon old man to a somewhat softern version of that same curmudgeon old man. You. know what would have been better tha starting with Russ and his wife? To start with Zoe and her crew or her family. She had such a great story as to why she felt she needed to rob this casino. Lean into that while still keeping the funny! It would have been real easy to switch that gear because Eddie wasn’t doing his normal Eddie-isms, which was refreshing. It’s always nice to see Eddie Murphy as a character and not a caricature.
All in all, I would say that this is something you can watch casually. You don’t have to pay much attention to this movie. It’s pretty straightforward. Nothing too dense, for all those who still watch movies with subtitles (eye roll). As anyone watched this already? Is there anything else in this movie that you feel could have been changed to make it more than just. casual watch?
