The Pick-up Artist

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]