The Pickup

Directed by Tim Story, The Pickup follows two armored-car drivers (Eddie Murphy’s Russell and Pete Davidson’s Travis) as they find themselves caught up in a heist led by Keke Palmer’s Zoe. It’s a promising buddy-comedy setup that’s slowly-but-surely squandered by Story, as the filmmaker, armed with Matt Mider and Kevin Burrows’ screenplay, delivers a sluggish and often surprisingly inept endeavor that suffers from a paucity of effective, entertaining attributes – with, most especially, the absence of engaging banter between the protagonists contributing heavily to the picture’s lackluster atmosphere. (It doesn’t help, certainly, that Murphy offers up a curiously subdued turn that stands in sharp contrast to Davidson’s wildly, and frustratingly, over-the-top performance.) And while the film admittedly includes a very small handful of amusing sequences, with this particularly true of a funny bit involving pancakes, The Pickup, which boasts a series of low-rent action sequences riddled with laughably bad CGI, builds towards a rather endless climax that’s hardly as satisfying (or exciting) as Story has obviously intended – thus confirming the movie’s place as a misfire that feels like it could (and should) be so much better.

*1/2 out of ****