Teaming Eddie Murphy with Pete Davidson for the armored car heist comedy “The Pickup” pays off pretty much exactly as you’d suspect. All that pairing-up two generations of “Saturday Night Live” comics guarantees are, well, “generation” jokes.
“Your generation can’t PIVOT” is about the best the millenial can manage.
And Eddie finds himself pulling faces and attempting funny voices as he struggles to make a laugh-starved script better.
But here’s what Tim Story, director of “The Blackening,” the “Shaft” remake and the “Ride Along” and “Think Like a Man” comedies brings to the table.
Fun with dye packs. A string of sight gags involved an armored car, mid-chase, loose cash and those devices that colorfully explode in robbers’ faces, etc. are deployed to absolutely hilarious effect in a farce where other giggles are hard to come by.
Davidson is the dorky, math-nerd “new guy,” Travis. He’s the sort who gets passed a note in a bank and immediately flips out and draws his weapon.
As the note’s a phone number from a fetching bank customer played by Keke Palmer, maybe he’s overreacted. Maybe Mr. Trigger Happy would be a better fit for ICE.
Murphy is “the legend around here,” “here” being the Guardian armored car service. Russ and his wife (Eva Longoria) dream of a B&B retirement venture. All he’s got to do is make it another six months on the job.
But that hottie passing Travis the note? She was coming on to him for information — about his route, the cameras on the truck, etc. Turns out, she’s the mastermind of a gang (Ismael Cruz Cordova, Jack Kesy) who come for the truck when Russ and wheelman Travis hit a stupidly-long “dead zone” in cell service on their route.
In New Jersey? OK.
What ensues are chases, which Travis clumsily gets them out of.
“Calm DOWN! Remember your TRAINING!”
“Training? I took a 15 hour correspondance course online! WHAT training?”
The simple plot exhausts its possibililities pretty quickly. Naturally, there’s a more complex one that involves a guy who nickname describes his business — “Chop Shop” (played by Marshawn Lynch, who skipped “make eye contact” day in acting school). No, this plot extension isn’t any funnier or more believable.
Little else about this lands and scans or even makes sense. Casting Andrew Dice Clay as the foul-mouthed armored truck dispatcher screams “Dan Aykyod wasn’t available?”
It’s refreshing to see Palmer dial down the manic patter that’s become her on-screen persona. But then, she’s not expected to provide the big laughs here. Davidson can’t find anything funny to bring to the set to give his character some edge. And improv hasn’t been in Murphy’s tool kit since the ’80s.
That’s why “The Pickup” never amounts to much more than a take-it-or-leave-it action comedy.
But those dye pack gags? They deserve to be in a better movie.
Rating: R, violence, profanity, sexual innuendo
Cast: Eddie Murphy, Pete Davidson, Eva Longoria,
Ismael Cruz Cordova, Jack Kesy, Andrew Dice Clay and Keke Palmer.
Credits: Directed by Tim Story, scripted by Kevin Burrows and Matt Mider. An MGM release on Amazon Prime.
Running time: 1:36
