Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Mark Molloy
Starring: Eddie Murphy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Taylour Paige, Kevin Bacon, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Paul Reiser, Bronson Pinchot
1980s Hollywood was fuelled by a simple formula, the "fish out of water."
Whether it be an alien landing in the suburbs; a boorish, middle-aged
Jewish comic attending college; or a young boy finding himself in the body
of Tom Hanks; audiences lapped this stuff up. With 1983's fish out of
water comedy Trading Places, director John Landis moulded Eddie Murphy into the '80s
equivalent of Groucho Marx. Just as the Jewish Marx had done in the '30s,
the African-American Murphy built his shtick around mocking wealthy white
people. The movie that cemented this status was 1984's
Beverly Hills Cop, in which Murphy played Axel Foley, an unfiltered Detroit undercover cop
who found himself in the alien surrounds of that American centre of white
elitism, Beverly Hills. The plot - something, something corruption, or
something - was irrelevant. Audiences turned up to see Murphy crack wise,
do funny voices and take the piss out of rich folk, and he did so with a
unique and natural ease that no comic performer has matched in the decades
since.
By the time Landis and Murphy reunited for 1994's terrible second sequel
Beverly Hills Cop III, they were no longer the rebellious and acerbic young Jewish and Black
disruptors of the early '80s; now they were just two out of touch rich
dudes. In 1994, Murphy stepping back into the role of Foley felt like
cosplay, like a multi-millionaire 60-year-old Roger Daltrey trying to sing
'My Generation' without irony. If it was unconvincing in 1994, how
cringe-inducing will it be a full 30 years later?
Any doubts that Murphy may not be able to pull this off now are
immediately dismissed. When we see him clad once again in the famous
varsity jacket, blue jeans and Adidas trainers we're fully onboard. He's
managed to pull off the Springsteen trick of getting away with wearing
working class duds despite owning more houses than most of us own socks.
There was a while there when Springsteen couldn't pull this off either,
but then his face started to get craggy and he suddenly looked like
someone who actually had spent his life working in New Jersey steel mills.
The same has happened to Murphy now. Gone is the preened and pampered
Murphy of the '90s, replaced by a man who while looking great for a
sexagenarian, looks like he's lived, who has taken a few knocks, whose
wealth hasn't protected him from the passage of time and all it takes from
us. As a working class kid in the '80s, Murphy was my favourite movie star
because he felt like one of us, at least until he was no longer one of us.
Four decades later he may have riches I can only dream of, but Murphy is
once again relatable.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F plays up this relatability from
the off, opening with a sequence in Foley's hometown of Detroit, no better
symbol of past glories and hard knocks. Adhering to cop movie logic, a
sixty-something Foley is still working the streets, idolised by the
younger men on the force and still aggravating his superiors, the latter
represented by Paul Reiser returning as Jeffrey, now a police
chief. A chase sequence involving a snowplough instantly pulls us into the
film's '80s and '90s influenced world with Foley making jokes as city
blocks are demolished and throbbing synths ruffle our speaker grills. Oh,
how we've missed such simple pleasures over the last couple of superhero
dominated decades.
Foley winds up back in Beverly Hills when his estranged lawyer daughter
Jane (Taylour Paige) is threatened to drop the case of a young
gang-banger who appears to have been framed for murder.
Judge Reinhold's Billy is now a private detective who has
disappeared while attempting to collect evidence to support Jane's case.
John Ashton's Taggart is now the Beverly Hills chief of police,
despite being 108 years old. The movie wastes no time in establishing the
villain as crooked police captain Grant (a shit-eating
Kevin Bacon), who suspiciously can afford a Rolex on a cop's
salary.
As with every other instalment, the plot is meaningless, simply a vessel
for Eddie Murphy to be Eddie Murphy. It's a little different now though,
as many of the comedic targets of the earlier instalments are now
recognised as cheap shots. Where earlier movies in the series played on
the underlying bigotry of those whom Foley encountered, here his own
prejudices are examined. Any attempts Foley makes to mock younger
generations are quickly shut down by Jane and her ex-lover cop Bobby (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). The series' hitherto most problematic character,
Bronson Pinchot's Serge, once the butt of cheap homophobic jokes,
returns and is dealt with in a commendable fashion; Serge hasn't changed,
but we have (well, most of us), and the character is now for us to laugh
with rather than at.
The man out of time who can't relate to his daughter is a tired cliche
but Murphy and Paige make the dynamic work. When Foley wisecracks with his
daughter, Murphy makes it clear that it's a defence mechanism, and Paige
is very good at selling the frustration she feels towards him. There's a
moment when the camera briefly lingers on Foley's face after a
particularly hurtful comment from Jane, and Murphy plays it like a man
whose entire life of regrets has just flashed before his eyes.
While there's a surprising amount of pathos here, it's interwoven
organically with the action and comedy. One of the things that made the
first two movies in this series work so well was how they channeled the
spirit of the Abbot & Costello Universal monsters movies. Foley might
have been a wise-cracking clown but he was placed in genuinely dangerous
situations, and he was the only one who wasn't taking it seriously. The
villains of those films weren't comedy villains, they were action movie
villains who would have been just at home in a Charles Bronson or Clint
Eastwood thriller. Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F understands
this, and when the action hits it's old school violent action, with a
classic squibfest finale in a mansion whose white walls are streaked with
the blood of dozens of mullet-haired bad guys.
It's not all successful. While Lorne Balfe's score manages to
seamlessly update Harold Faltermeyer's iconic synths, the rehashing
of songs from the original soundtrack (The Heat is On, Neutron Dance)
comes off as an unnecessarily cloying attempt to generate nostalgia.
There's one very funny gag involving a rich white lady and her tiny dog,
but there are also about seven unfunny gags involving rich white ladies
and their tiny dogs. But these are minor quibbles. For the most part, like
Creed
and
Top Gun: Maverick, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F has pulled off the tricky
assignment of maintaining the spirit of a much-loved original while moving
it forward and inviting a new generation into the fold. I never thought
I'd be saying this in 2024, but I'm eagerly awaiting Beverly Hills Cop
5.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is on
Netflix from July 3rd.
