Roger Ebert absolutely saved this romantic comedy from Robert Downey Jr. and Molly Ringwald

Film critics, like any other human being on the planet, can have absolutely lousy days. And when they take that lousy day to the theater with them, a perfectly innocent little film might just catch a few undeserved strays. It’s a very rare phenomenon, but I unfortunately let bad mood color my appreciation of a film that, after a second viewing, turned out to be great.

James Toback’s 1987 light comedy, “The Pick-Up Artist,” isn’t a crime against cinema, but Roger Ebert certainly 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 romantic comedy-gangster film where a happy ending is never in doubt. Robert Downey Jr. (from “Weird Science”) stars as an elementary school teacher who spends his free time trying to win women over to his bed. Or his car. Or anywhere sex can take place without ending in arrest. You think that 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 can’t imagine it has aged well.

Downey’s various conquests lead him to form a relationship with a young woman (Molly Ringwald) who is $25,000 in debt to a New York gangster (Harvey Keitel). She also struggles to care for her alcoholic father (Dennis Hopper), who directs Downey’s corpse with a heart of gold to help him get out of financial distress in Atlantic City through gambling.

You’ve seen this movie before, but the formulas work for a reason. Ebert, however, was not in the mood to play a programmer when he watched this film.

In his half-star review of “The Pick-Up Artist,” Ebert laments that you can’t combine a “horny teen movie” with one in which the plucky heroine tries to win big at a casino to stop mobsters from breaking her father’s kneecaps. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen this exact combo, but I’ve seen plenty of exciting teen movies where hormonal kids band together to save their summer camp or grandparents’ house from greedy developers. I don’t think Toback is attempting a clumsy deflection here.

One legitimate criticism Ebert leveled at “The Pick-Up Artist” is that Molly Ringwald, a national treasure and the film’s best-known actor, takes a back seat to the rapid-fire antics of Downey and several of the supporting performers. She’s certainly underused in the film, but, with its 81-minute running time, everyone is fighting for screen time. While Ebert wanted more of Ringwald, he could have done with a lot less of Downey. As he writes 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 elementary school teacher who tries to pick up everything feminine and attractive that appears in his field of vision. […] He practices in front of a mirror and ends up being smart enough to pick up the naughty little sister in a ’40s musical.”

Wow, Rog! Why are we introducing an old-fashioned guy from the 1940s into this review? This is a truly grating article, out of step with the opinions of his contemporaries. (They found it either appealing or a little undercooked.) I don’t think “The Pick-Up Artist” is “terribly silly,” nor do I think it has a “terribly heartfelt conclusion.” This is mediocrity at worst.