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The Pickup sees Eddie Murphy try to head back to comedyland again, after the Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F misfire, as a pair of armoured truck drivers.
It’s a buddy-buddy comedy, with Eddie having to babysit Pete Davidson (Dumb Money) for the day. The former is the sensible one, while the latter is the pillock of the pair. I could use their character names, Russell Pierce and Travis Stolly, but I can’t even remember them using those during the course of the movie, so I’ll just refer to them by their real names. It’s not going to make a difference.
Eddie’s celebrating 25 years of marriage with wife Eva Longoria (Dora and the Lost City of Gold), while just prior to a forthcoming routing pickup, Pete spends the night with the uber-hot Keke Palmer (as Zoe), most recently seen in the reasonably-entertaining One Of Them Days.
As shown in the trailer – and with absolutely no surprise to anyone – the mastermind of the upcoming $60m heist, is Zoe.
On the plus side, The Pickup starts off with some reasonable banter between Eddie and Pete, such as with the latter guessing the former’s age: “Well, you’re black, so you look 40, but you could be 90(!)”
It’s also amusing when Pete puts some crap rap music on in the vehicle, Eddie sneers at it, so Pete changes it to… The Pointer Sisters’ Neutron Dance, which was used in the opening scene of Murphy’s Beverly Hills Cop, where he’s holding to the truck as it belts down the road, trying to throw him off.
However, it soon disappears down Cliché Close. As the trailer showed, Keke sleeps with Pete, not by chance, but because she’s the baddie in the operation, even though she’s as convincing a criminal as Piers Morgan is a competent broadcaster.
Plus, since she’s organising the truck’s money pickup, ahead of the REAL truck that should be doing it, in order to steal a ton of money… In reality, CCTV could track their van, so they wouldn’t get away with it. And how does a securiy van have a hole in that side that anyone can easily breach?! It’s so ridiculous.
Okay, this film is not Shakespeare, and there’s plot holes the size of that one in the side of the truck, but even the surprisingly decent Heads Of State was better than this! And even ChatGPT could’ve made a better job of The Pickup‘s script!
And at one point, when baddies were trying to break into their truck from the rear, their “solution” was to try and go faster, when in fact, they should’ve just slammed the brakes on, and the baddie would’ve gone flying!
Additionally, as not too much was going on, Pete exclaimed: “Wait, so that’s it? The end?”… No, there was still 20 minutes to go.
However, it’s fun to watch Andrew Dice Clay. I still haven’t seen The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, despite seeing it in the video rental store a million times, and never getting round to watching it. However, I knew it was in 2.35:1, and in the ’80s and into the ’90s, fuckwitted studios would still crop films to 4:3 at the time, except on the rare occasion when it was a foreign film. At least Artificial Eye and Tartan had the balls to do things properly.
NOTE: There are NO mid- or post-credits scenes.
The Pickup is on Prime Video from Wednesday August 6th. It’s not yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD. However, once announced, it will appear on the New DVD Blu-ray 3D and 4K releases UK list.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 95 minutes
Release date: August 6th 2025
Studio: Amazon Prime Video
Aspect Ratio: 2.00:1
Rating: 3/10
Director: Tim Story
Producers: John Davis, John Fox, Charisse Hewitt-Webster, Eddie Murphy, Tim Story
Screenplay: Kevin Burrows, Matt Mider
Music: Christopher Lennertz
Cast:
Russell Pierce: Eddie Murphy
Travis Stolly: Pete Davidson
Zoe: Keke Palmer
Banner: Jack Kesy
Miguel: Ismael Cruz Cordova
Natalie Pierce: Eva Longoria
Clark: Andrew Dice Clay
Mikey: Jef Holbrook
Chop Shop: Marshawn Lynch
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.