The Pickup is one of those movie which is supposed to be fun and turns out so flat, because so many things aren't working out,so yeah, this is the worst of the bad movies to watch, Eddie Murphy stars as armored truck driver his name Russell, who is essentially counting down the days until retirement, and Pete Davidson as the rookie Travis, who wants to be a police officer one day, then the nightly pick up of cash goes awry when a gang of thieves, headed by Zoe (Keke Palmer), ambushes them on the way. And guess what, Zoe already seduces Travis earlier, without him realizing, so she can have inside information on this very heist, hetting robbed is bad enough for Russell and Travis, but they soon find out that the cargo they were protecting the whole time is not really what they were told, which only puts them even more in danger than a robbery alone.
But here's my true thought on this one , so I'm not going to sit here and pretend that this movie earned praised when it didn't haha. On paper this cast should not miss. Eddie Murphy, Pete Davidson, Keke Palmer, that's a lineup with more than enough natural comedic talent to carry a film like this, But somewhere along the way, from the script to the direction, none of that talent gets breathing room, that's not the kind of chemistry that should be between Murphy and Davidson, the old pro and the new guy, the straight man and the wild card. It's not that the actors don't want to do more, just that the film keeps putting them in scenes that don't allow their personalities to really bounce off each other the way good buddy comedy requires.
And that's really the core issue with the whole movie, that it can't determine what it wants to be, Half wants to be this action chase, half wants to be trucks, guns, criminals, danger around every corner. The other half wants a light hearted comedy that's based on the natural charm of its cast, It doesn't blend those two things well the way it's supposed to be, it's more of a “well, here's some action, and then here is some comedy,” but not really taking a turn between the two, so when it gets to the comedic stuff, it still hasn't caught the comedic thought from the action side, and so it doesn't, it's not the fun kind of whiplash.
Keke Palmer's Zoe is probably the most interesting piece of this whole puzzle on paper, Zoe, a smart mastermind running her own con in a con, but even that isn't given enough depth to feel like a real threat or a real character, she's mostly there to move the plot along. But that's the thing with all these people in this movie, no one has any special space to really be a character that you can relate to, they're just characters being pushed around by a story that isn't strong enough to support them.
Hmm, the only thing I'll give it is this, it's not boring to watch, it's not painful to sit through, it moves fast enough that you're not bored exactly, you're just left wanting so much more than what you got, especially knowing what this cast is capable of when they're given better material, it is the kind of movie you watch once, maybe half paying attention while doing something else, and forget about almost immediately after.
So no, I'm not going to pretend The Pickup is some hidden gem people are sleeping on, If you have 90 minutes to kill and nothing else to do, it's pretty good yeah, but it's far from memorable, and honestly, with this cast, that's the real disappointment, Talent this strong deserved a script that actually knew what to do with them.
Rating: 50/100
