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]

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

A light and fairly innocuous youth picture.

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]

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.

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]

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