The Pick-Up Artist

Director: James Toback
Year Released: 1987
Rating: 2.0

Womanizer with a beat-up Camaro (Robert Downey Jr.) also has - get ready for this - a heart of pure gold: he lives with his Grammy (and watches her diet), he's great with children and he's willing to take risks to help sweet Molly Ringwald's alcoholic father (Dennis Hopper playing another version of Dennis Hopper) pay off his gambling debts. Downey makes it work for a little while, carrying the picture on charisma alone - he isn't considered one of the finest American actors for nothing - but the picture is butchered/neutered (notice how Harvey Keitel's expletives were edited out) and the last act - in Atlantic City - is choppy and unsatisfying. Still, I'll take the innocuous charm of Downey (and, dare I say, Toback himself) over the self-styled vindictive nerds of today's "seduction community" - brought 'to light' by Neil Strauss' The Game with their entire "number close and run" mantra. "I'm a romantic," the Artist utters, and even if he isn't, at least he wants to believe it.