Roger Ebert Absolutely Savaged This Robert Downey Jr. And Molly Ringwald Rom-Com

Movie critics, like every other human being on the planet, can have absolutely rotten days. And when they take that rotten day into the theater with them, a perfectly innocent little film might just catch some unearned strays. It's a very rare occurrence, but I've regrettably let a bad mood color my appreciation of a movie that, after a second viewing, turned out to be terrific.

James Toback's lightweight 1987 comedy "The Pick-Up Artist" is not a crime against the motion picture medium, but Roger Ebert sure treated it that way. It was a change of pace for the now-disgraced Toback, who was best known for writing emotionally charged character studies like "The Gambler" and "Fingers." "The Pick-Up Artist," by comparison, is a hybrid rom-com/gangster flick where a happy ending is never in doubt. Robert Downey Jr. (coming off the likes of "Weird Science") stars as a grade school teacher who spends his free time trying to talk women into his bed. Or his car. Or anywhere sex can be had without ending in arrest. You're thinking this sounds problematic, and I haven't even mentioned that Downey's character has a penchant for hitting on his students' mothers. I haven't seen this movie in 38 years, but I cannot imagine it has aged well.

Downey's various conquests lead to him striking up a relationship with a young woman (Molly Ringwald) who's $25,000 in debt to a New York City mobster (Harvey Keitel). She's also struggling to look after her alcoholic father (Dennis Hopper), which leads Downey's cad with a heart of gold to help her gamble her way out of financial distress in Atlantic City.

You've seen this movie before, but formulas work for a reason. Ebert, however, was in no mood for a programmer when he watched this film.

In his half-star review of "The Pick-Up Artist," Ebert grouses that you can't combine a "horny teenager movie" with a film in which the plucky heroine tries to win big at a casino to keep mobsters from breaking her father's kneecaps. I don't know that I've seen this exact combo before, but I have seen many horny teen movies where hormone-addled kids rally to save their summer camp or a grandparent's house from greedy developers. I don't think Toback is attempting a clumsy deviation here.

One legit criticism Ebert levels at "The Pick-Up Artist" is that Molly Ringwald, a national treasure and the top-billed actor in the movie, takes a back seat to Downey's fast talking antics and several of the supporting performers. She is certainly underutilized in the movie, but, with its 81-minute runtime, everyone's scrambling for screen time. While Ebert wanted more Ringwald, he could've done with far less Downey. As he wrote in his review:

"That leaves Robert Downey as the film's star, an honor he does nothing to deserve. He is the 'pickup artist,' a 21-year-old grade-school teacher who tries to pick up everything that is female, attractive, and appears in his field of vision. [...] He practices his come-ons in front of a mirror and eventually gets to be almost clever enough to pick up the ugly little sister in a 1940s musical."

Whoa, Rog! Why are we dragging an outmoded 1940s type into this review? It's a truly grouchy write-up, one that was out of step with his contemporaries' opinions. (They found it either appealing or a tad undercooked.) I don't think "The Pick-Up Artist" is "appallingly silly," nor do I think it boasts a "dreadfully sincere conclusion." It's a mediocrity at worst.