The Pickup: A Disappointment That Wastes Its Talented Leads

The Pickup is the latest streaming comedy offering from Prime Video, this time highlighting comedic heavyweights Eddie Murphy, Pete Davidson, and Keke Palmer. Setting the stage, when a routine cash pickup takes a wild turn, mismatched armored truck drivers Russell (Murphy) and Travis (Davidson) are ambushed by ruthless criminals, led by the savvy mastermind Zoe (Palmer). As chaos erupts, the unlikely duo must navigate danger, clashing personalities, and one very bad day that somehow keeps spiraling more and more out of control. Despite starring two of the funniest actors working today in Davidson and Palmer, and a bonafide comedy legend in Murphy, The Pickup merely amounts to another lifeless streaming comedy that is both short on energy, and has hardly any laughs going for it.

Running at just under the 100-minute mark, the film moves at a decent pace. To their credit, the three leads do a good job in spite of the subpar material they are given to work with but for a film with a fair share of flaws, their performances were far from them. Murphy feels like he has been phoning it in terms of his performances as of late but, that being said, a phoned in Murphy performance still has more energy than most, as he nonetheless continues to be a delight as Russell. Davidson, meanwhile, gives the most spirited and committed performance as Travis, generating the most laughs. Finally, though Palmer has the least to do comedically as Zoe, she once again proves how talented she is as an actress. Murphy, Davidson, and Palmer work very well together over their time together on screen, as their strong chemistry feels wasted in a film like this.

However, aside from those aforementioned bright spots, there isn’t all that much else that works here. The Pickup is an action comedy, yet it completely fails both genres spectacularly. For whatever reason, the film isn’t funny in the absolute slightest, and virtually all of the humor either lands with a thud or falls flat on its face. It is truly remarkable how none of these actors assembled here could salvage any of this script or even riff to get any sort of a laugh. While some of the flaws on the comedy side could have been forgiven if the action side of things had better held up its end of the bargain, the action did not rise to the occasion, delivering the most boring action sequences in recent memory. Serving up the kind of action audiences have come to an expect from a film like this, none of it is filmed or edited very well, looking very amateurish for the most part.

Director Tim Story has been in the business for several decades now, and isn’t new to both action or comedy, but with The Pickup, he delivers what might be one of his weakest efforts to date. Considering his past experience, someone who would appear to be the right fit for the job, at least on paper, clearly wasn’t as he was just dealt with a bad hand in terms of the script. Had it been helmed by someone with a better track record with comedy and action, the film could have had a better fate. Similarly, the film lacks any type of stakes whatsoever, leaving it devoid of any tension across the moments where its main characters found themselves in danger. In regards to the supporting cast, the film pretty much wastes the likes of Eva Longoria as Russell’s wife Natalie, Marshawn Lynch (Chop Shop), and Andrew Dice Clay (Clark), despite them all showing up and trying their best.

In the end, while The Pickup may not be among the worst films of the year material by any stretch, it is still a crushing disappointment for fans of Murphy, Davidson, or Palmer in a film that ultimately amounts to a waste of time destined to fade away into the the ever growing catalog of other streaming titles released this year. When going in with zero expectations, audiences could likely find some enjoyment here but as it stands, it is not deserving of any type of recommendation and is safe to just skip altogether.

still courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios

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Connor Carey

www.connorsmoviereviews.com/