Bonus Review: Beverly Hills Cop - Axel F

The Fourth Film In The Eddie Murphy 'Beverly Hills Cop' Franchise

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INTRODUCTION

This is a quick review of the newly released film Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. Keep in mind this is but one of the many movies I watch every year, and that whatever initial grade I come up for this film could change for better or worse with time. To better keep up to date with both my thoughts on other movies and if my feelings on this film changed, follow me on Letterboxd.

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THE PLOT

Via Letterboxd: Forty years after his unforgettable first case in Beverly Hills, Detroit cop Axel Foley returns to do what he does best - solve crimes and cause chaos.

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QUICK REVIEW

The eighties seem like all the rage when it comes to the recent flavor of nostalgia. As I write this review for a fourth movie in a franchise born in the eighties, I’m also scheduled to go see a movie set in the eighties later tonight (Bonus written review incoming for that one as well).

That franchise is of course the Beverly Hills Cop franchise that spawn two hit eighties classics and a much derided 1994 third installment (In fact there’s an inside joke in this fourth part about said third film). And unlike many others I never got the chance to catch up to the Eddie Murphy lead action comedy flicks, so I figured it’d be no better time than now to finally fix those blind spots. So I went ahead and binged the three previous movies yesterday and then caught the new one this morning.

I ended up really liking and having fun with the first two films, and to my (somewhat) surprise I actually enjoyed the third one though its easily the weakest of the series. If I had to boil down as to why that last one is so unpopular, I’d have to say that the first two had an aesthetic to it that really pushed the comedic and more fun parts of these movies forward. Where as the third is hampered by a more nineties aesthetic that doesn’t seem to fit the franchise and leans into more tense action that comedy (And one comedic bit in that movie runs way too long). But having really liked the first two and thinking the third was decent but not great, which of the two halves would the new Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F be?