Popcorn Warning: Eddie Murphy Just Slept Through an Armored Truck Heist—Fans Are SCREAMING
They said Eddie Murphy was back. “The electric king of 80s comedy.” “The man who made Beverly Hills Cop a cultural event, who owned the ‘laugh-then-shoot' genre before Netflix even had algorithms.” So when the trailer for The Pickup slammed onto the internet—complete with Keke Palmer's ice-cold mastermind and Pete Davidson riffing like he lost his Adderall—you'd expect fireworks.
Instead? You could practically taste the apathy. Murphy's bored—Stonehenge bored. Davidson's “new wave” energy lands with the impact of a dad joke at a funeral. Are these the same shockwaves that once shot through Trading Places? Or just leftovers from Amazon's ‘suggested for you' graveyard?
Why This Trailer Is a Panic Button (And A Shrug)
The industry PR pushes this as Murphy's magic: old-school cool meets meme-age madness. What do we actually get? An action-comedy hijack set to auto-pilot—courtesy of director Tim Story, whose filmography swerves from Barbershop charm to Tom & Jerry slapstick. The budget's undisclosed, but based on this trailer? It's spent on car flips and a neon-fried Amazon logo.
There's an ensemble—Eva Longoria, Roman Reigns, Marshawn Lynch—all crammed into a plot that's as inspired as, well, direct-to-streaming releases post-2020. The insane detail? Murphy, now 63, gives less energy here than he did phoning in as Donkey for Shrek 5. No joke, compare this with his turn in Dreamgirls or the wild genius of Dolemite—this is decaf Murphy. It's as if Oscar fever wore off, replaced by the “straight-to-digital” flu.
The Long View: Same Pit, Different Shovel
Let's get real: Hollywood's been here before. Think Adam Sandler's endless Netflix blitz—”star power + algorithm = profit.” Once, direct-to-streaming spelled disaster. Now? It's the norm for supposedly “blockbuster” releases. Murphy's last decades have yo-yoed from subversive resilience (Dolemite) to the cringeworthy excess of Norbit. Regaining that edge? It takes more than car chases and Davidson's stoner banter.
Historical déjà vu: See also—Bruce Willis's late-career genre treadmill, or even Mel Gibson showing up in “dead serious” B-movies. Pattern? Legendary talent, tepid scripts, streaming as a last resort. But unlike those cases, Murphy could have owned a redemption arc—think Paul Thomas Anderson, Spike Lee, or anything with real bite. Instead, we get generic heist vibes and lines like, “Since you're gonna kill us, why don't you just show us who you are!” Genius or garbage? Why not both.
As one (very real) rival critic put it: “Murphy looks like he's reading cue cards from the getaway van.” Even some crew members (anonymously, of course) have reportedly called the shoot “more paint-by-numbers than Picasso's later years.”
Judgment Day: Is ‘The Pickup' the Last Straw or the First Spark?
So, is this Murphy's deranged return or a cryogenic sleepwalk? Up next for him: more Donkey, a Pink Panther reboot (yes, Inspector Clouseau), maybe a better script if Hollywood wakes up. For now, The Pickup looks less like a comeback and more like a cautionary tale. This is popcorn irony—prepackaged for Prime. You'll either hate it or forget it before the streaming ticker hits zero.
