Director: Tim Story
Writers: Kevin Burrows, Matt Mider
Stars: Eddie Murphy, Pete Davidson, Keke Palmer
Synopsis: A routine cash pickup turns into a deadly pursuit when two mismatched armored truck drivers are ambushed by ruthless criminals with plans beyond the cash.
I’m beginning to wonder if Eddie Murphy is just cashing a paycheck at this point. In nearly every recent comedy he’s done, he seems to sleepwalk through the script, taking on reserved roles that demand very little from him. Take his latest, The Pickup, for example. His co-star Pete Davidson gobbles up what might generously be called the fast-talking witticisms and charisma traits that used to define Murphy’s screen presence.
The problem is, Davidson can’t hold a candle to Murphy in that department. Murphy built his career on confidence, swagger, and razor-sharp satire. But now, he plays every role like he’s Danny Glover muttering, “I’m too old for this sh*t.” So why take on The Pickup, now streaming on Prime Video? Well, maybe when you get to that age, you start doing things for the money.
Then again, maybe it’s not an age thing at all, which is kind of the crux of The Pickup. Everyone, from Davidson to the consistently excellent Keke Palmer (Nope, One of Them Days), seems to be phoning it in, slogging through a script packed with exposition, little on laughs, and even lighter on intrigue.
The story follows two armored car security guards at very different points in their lives. Russell Pierce (Murphy) has been on the job for nearly a quarter of a century and is just six months away from retirement. He kisses his wife (Eva Longoria) goodbye before heading to work, ready to celebrate their anniversary that evening. Russell takes his job seriously—no food, no music, and certainly no fun inside the vehicle—just straight professionalism.
However, those strict rules are tested when his boss (Andrew Dice Clay) assigns him a partner: the new guy, Travis (Davidson), who just last week made the mistake of pulling a gun on a woman at a bank who was merely trying to slip him her number. That woman, Zoe (Palmer), had only asked for a pen, but instead, she got a memorable “How I met your father” story in the making. Travis mistook her gesture as the start of a robbery, not a romance.
Somehow, Zoe still agrees to go out with him, and they end up spending the weekend together. Travis is so smitten, he walks away from the experience beaming, and still wearing the same pair of underwear from Friday. I only bring this up because the script, by Matt Mider and Kevin Burrows, brings it up repeatedly, as if they’ve discovered an untapped reservoir of hygiene humor they feel compelled to return to again and again.
Prime Video’s The Pickup comes from writer-director Tim Story, which makes its listlessness a mild surprise given the talent involved. Story’s filmography includes several genuinely funny entries—Barbershop, Think Like a Man, and Ride Along (we’ll politely leave out the turn of the century of The Fantastic Four films). While none of those are masterpieces, they’re consistently humorous and entertaining.
What those films had, beyond tighter scripts, was a strong cast chemistry. Here, Murphy and Davidson have little comedic friction, and the latter has even less spark with Palmer, not even enough to mine for laughs. The movie, like the Ride Along franchise, also leans heavily on yawn-inducing action, trudging through the genre playbook step by step, day by day, as the saying goes.
The plot is ultimately pointless, riddled with holes, as if someone dusted off an old ’90s script and forgot to update it for today’s tech-savvy world. In an age of digital surveillance, cell phone tracking, metadata, geotagging, and forensic monitoring, the film seems oblivious to how easily these characters would be caught, should I go on?
The Pickup isn’t one of the year’s worst films, but it might only be entertaining in a Rob Schneider sort of way. What’s most perplexing is the misuse of a talented cast, a seasoned action-comedy director, and writers Matt Mider and Kevin Burrows, who, after all, penned The Package for Netflix, which I still consider one of the funniest streaming comedies to date.
But no, this isn’t that. The Pickup is just another classic streaming disappointment, seemingly made to fill a content quota in the ongoing platform wars, nothing more or less. Which is a shame, because with this much comedic talent, there is no reason this couldn’t be a mainstream crowdpleaser, instead of recycling the same old product almost weekly.
Which begs the question: if streaming networks are just churning out movies and television to feed the content mill, why not take creative risks if you’re going to fill a quota anyway? Make your content stand out. Instead, I can scroll through my reviews for InSession and find a growing pile of Prime Video garbage—The Pickup, Space Cadets, Canary Black, Brothers—and struggle to find any reason these films exist other than to waste your precious time.
You can stream The Pickup only on Prime Video starting August 8th!
