The Pick-up Artist

The first hour of Toback's movie bounces and sparkles like a stone skipping on water. Downey is such an ingenuous con man it's impossible not to smile at his chutzpah, and Ringwald reveals a grave, grown-up solidity we haven't seen before. [28 Sept 1987, p.77]

The charm of the film (and it does have an effective degree) ultimately seems as synthetic as Jack's. Perhaps the real pickup artist of the title is Toback himself, hiding behind a winning smile as he attempts, for the first time in his career, to hustle the audience. Read full review

It's bright and blithe, like the sound of the 60s girl groups on the track; the flimsy plot hardly matters.

The movie is 75 minutes of easy entertainment, important mainly as the launching pad for Downey, whose glibness, good looks and quickness of spirit mark him as a man who may pick up as many accolades as ladies in a promising future career. [19 Sept 1987, p.B5]

The film roams from the Upper West Side to Coney Island to Atlantic City, maintaining a lighthearted style that doesn't quite match the hints of obsessiveness in Mr. Toback's screenplay. Read full review

Anyone want to watch some guy pick up women? Especially a fat-lipped, insincere kid who says "Did anyone ever tell you you have the body of a Botticelli and the face of a Dégas?" Me neither. But luckily, there's a little more than that to James Toback's The Pickup Artist. Read full review

A light and fairly innocuous youth picture. Read full review

The movie's ending is overly sentimental -- something I never thought I'd see in a Toback movie. What it delivers is a message about commitment -- and it's pretty much of a crock. You don't feel that Toback's heart is in it either, especially as an explanation for Jack's behavior. It's too pat a resolution. Read full review

The film is carried by Downey, appearing in his first starring role. Ringwald, while performing adequately, just doesn't seem right for the part. Toback has devised an interesting premise that draws parallels between risking one's heart and one's wallet, but the picture itself risks little. Read full review

As long as this film sticks to what its title suggests, The Pick-Up Artist is a tolerably amusing comedy. But as soon as the compulsive skirt-chaser gets hooked on one girl, James Toback's long-gestating portrait of a one-track mind becomes bogged down in unconvincing plot mechanics. Read full review

It's too thin to be satisfying. It consistently sparkles and moves along gracefully, but at a mere 81 minutes it leaves you unsatisfied. Although trimmed from an R to a PG-13, reportedly in light of the AIDS scare, you're nevertheless left with the feeling that more than sex ended up on the cutting-room floor. [19 Sept 1987, p.9]

ONE THING about The Pick-up Artist : it's fast. Crazy fast, like a manic 2-year-old in a major pout - all energy and no direction. This is a picture for the channel-hopping set, something to watch with half an eye while all your mind is coasting elsewhere, less a movie than a feature- length trailer, a series of short, cluttered scenes cut to a rock 'n' roll score and leading . . . . Well, that's the other thing about The Pick-up Artist: it leads precisely nowhere. [18 Sept 1987]

For all their bantering about being losers on the verge of falling in love, there's very little chemistry between Ringwald and Downey. [21 Sept 1987, p.1D]

When the film ends after a mere eighty-one minutes it feels like Toback and company simply gave up and decided to let the audience go home twenty minutes early as a covert apology for the film they just endured, a glum little trifle that fails as both a James Toback movie and a Molly Ringwald vehicle. Read full review

This is an appallingly silly movie, from its juvenile comic overture to its dreadfully sincere conclusion. Read full review