Beverly Hills Cop 4: Axel F - A Review: Eddie Murphy...is that you?

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. It’s a formulaic action-comedy…but it does boast an engaging and energized Eddie Murphy…something we haven’t seen in a really long time.

It’s hard to believe it but Beverly Hills Cop, the blockbuster action comedy that made Eddie Murphy a megastar, hit theatres forty years ago in 1984.

To put that into context, consider that forty years before Beverly Hills Cop, World War II was still going on and Bing Crosby was the biggest star in Hollywood.

It’s easy to forget now, but Eddie Murphy was, back in the 1980’s, the most massive star in the Hollywood universe – he was like Bing Crosby with ba-ba-ba-balls. He was the biggest tv star (SNL), movie star and comedian on the planet…he was so big he put out musical albums that were atrocious but they still sold well and got continuous radio play. I mean, who could forget the hit song “Boogie in your Butt”?

Murphy’s superstar status, which reached its apex in 1984 declined slowly…and then all at once. In the wake of his supreme successes with 48 Hrs. (1982), Trading Places (1983), Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Coming to America (1988) the quality of work began to decline - despite a minor renaissance in 1992 (Boomerang, The Distinguished Gentleman).

In an effort to salvage his stardom Murphy made Beverly Hills Cop 3 in 1994 and it was brutally bad and instantly forgotten. At that point the bloom was definitely off the Murphy rose. He then sold his soul and dignity and dove into the Nutty Professor and Dr. Doolittle franchises and his cache and career went precipitously down from there.

Murphy has spent the last quarter of a century – with the exception of 2006’s Dreamgirls, churning out the laziest, most awful, money-grab garbage imaginable.

In recent years he has returned to his earlier successes in the hopes of a career resurgence or a money infusion. First there was Coming 2 America, a sequel to 1988’s brilliant Coming to America…which is arguably Murphy’s last good movie. Coming 2 America was a comedically flaccid venture devoid of Murphy’s charm and heart that so effectively fueled the original.

And now there is Beverly Hills Cop 4 which premiered on Netflix July 3, 2024. Murphy is back as Axel Foley, the wise cracking Detroit cop who is a very fast-talking fish out of water in the posh confines of Beverly Hills. Also back are Taggart and Rosewood, John Ashton and Judge Reinhold respectively, as well as Paul Reiser as Axel’s fellow Detroit cop Jeffrey and Bronson Pinchot as Serge. Joining the festivities are Beverly Hills Cop newcomers Joseph Gordon-Leavitt as a cop, Kevin Bacon as a bad guy cop and Taylour Paige as Axel’s adult daughter.

Beverly Hills Cop 1 and 2 were big hits and perfect vehicles for Murphy’s charisma and comedy. Beverly Hills Cop 3 (1994) was apocalyptically awful. Beverly Hills Cop 4 is…somewhere in between.

Is Beverly Hills Cop 4 a good movie? No. Is Beverly Hills Cop 4 a bad movie? Not really. It’s just sort of a formulaic movie (that somehow cost $150 million to make!) that plays out in front of you and then it’s over and no one will really care one way or the other.

The one notable thing about Beverly Hills Cop 4 though is that it’s the first movie in decades…maybe since Bowfinger (1999), where Eddie Murphy seems engaged and energized and not simply there for the check.

Murphy, at his height, had an undeniable charm and charisma that dominated the screen, which is why it was always so jarring to see him dead-eyed and dull sleepwalking through the second half of his career.

But in Beverly Hills Cop 4 Murphy is back being at ease and comfortable on screen. Axel Foley is sort of the Eddie Murphy of old and Murphy makes the most of it. He is funny, cool (but not too cool) and enjoyable to be around. You never feel like Eddie Murphy is phoning it in and just going through the motions…which is a refreshing change of pace.

The film follows its action-comedy roots and sticks pretty tight to the formula…a formula which it perfected back in 1984 and which others have used and abused ever since with ever more diminishing returns. To give an indication of how culturally mammoth the original Beverly Hills Cop movie was and what an extraordinary talent Murphy was, consider that Michael Bay poached the formula with his Bad Boys franchise and had to use both Will Smith AND Martin Lawrence to fill the Eddie Murphy role.

Beverly Hills Cop 4, which is the directorial debut of Mark Molloy and is written by Will Beall and Kevin Etten, is very conscious of the franchise’s past and winks along to the nostalgia. For example, in the first ten minutes of the movie it features the hit songs from the Beverly Hills Cop movies in the 80’s. It opens with Glenn Frey’s “The Heat is on”, followed by Bob Seger’s “Shakedown”, then the Pointer Sisters “Neutron Dance”, and of course the franchise’s synth-heavy anthem by Herbie Hancock. That Glenn Frey and one of the Pointer Sisters are dead, and that Bob Seger is permanently retired, only goes to emphasize how damn long ago that first film really was.

The plot of Beverly Hills Cop 4 is not really important. Just know that there’s trouble in Beverly Hills involving Axel Foley’s estranged daughter and he comes to LA from Detroit to figure everything out and make things right. Taggart (John Ashton) is now a police chief in Beverly Hills, Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) is a private detective and Serge (Bronson Pinchot) is still a weirdly gay-ish foreign man about Beverly Hills.

There’s a copious amount of plastic surgery apparent on both Reinhold and Pinchot’s distorted faces (oh Hollywood!) and none of the old cast bring the same joie de vivre as Murphy does, but what can you do?

There are some action sequences, none of which move the needle very much. And there’s some shootouts which feature villains who can’t shoot straight and good guys who can.

You won’t care about the convoluted plot or how it resolves (it resolves exactly like you think it does) or anything like that, but the only reason to tune in, then tune out and watch Beverly Hills Cop 4 is to see Eddie Murphy.

Murphy isn’t his old self in this movie…and he isn’t even a shadow of his former self in this movie…but he is a shadow of a shadow of his former self…and that’s better than anything Will Smith and Martin Lawrence or any other pretenders to the Murphy crown could ever hope to muster.

If you like Eddie Murphy, then Beverly Hills Cop 4, despite being mindless and middling movie mundanity, is worth watching to remember what was…and what might have been.

Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2024

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 32 - Coming 2 America

On this episode of everybody's favorite cinema podcast, Barry and I return to Zamunda for Coming 2 America, the Eddie Murphy led sequel to his 1988 comedy classic Coming to America. Topics discussed include backyard skunks, Eddie Murphy's faded star and the trouble with today's comedy. As an added bonus this episode features a return of the insanely popular segment - "Let's Pretend We're Studio Execs", where we play Hollywood bigwigs and recast the movie!

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: episode 32 - Coming 2 America

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Coming 2 America: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This movie proves that Eddie Murphy’s comedy fastball is a faded, distant memory, which transforms this movie from a limp comedy into a devastating tragedy.

There was a time when Eddie Murphy was the biggest comedian and movie star on the planet. In the 1980’s he had a string of comedy blockbusters, 48 Hrs. (1982), Trading Places (1983), Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Coming to America (1988), that made him the epicenter of comedy culture. Back then it was Eddie’s world and we were all just living and laughing in it.

Murphy’s meteoric rise to fame began on Saturday Night Live , where he debuted in 1980, at the tender young age of 19, and hilariously held court until 1984. Murphy was a electrifying presence on the show and an equally dynamic stand up comedian, as evidenced by his stand up comedy specials Delirious (1983) and Raw (1987).

Coming to America (1988), directed by John Landis, was an intriguing film as it showcased Murphy’s scintillating talent, his abundant charisma and his remarkable versatility. The film was rated R so Murphy’s more profane comedic edge could be spotlighted, but it also had a love story at its heart, which allowed Murphy to mine his more sweet and good-natured side.

Coming to America was an original and captivating comedy that seemed to portend Murphy’s star growing even larger. But unfortunately, instead of being the launching pad to even greater heights, Coming to America ended up being the last good thing Eddie Murphy has ever done. Yes, there were some mildly acceptable movies that came after it, such as The Distinguished Gentleman (1992) and Bowfinger (1999), but these banal efforts pale in comparison to Murphy’s glorious mid-80’s apex.

33 years later Eddie Murphy and company are back with a Coming to America sequel. Coming 2 America, which premiered on Amazon Prime Friday, March 5th, is the 30 years too late Coming to America sequel that no one was asking for and that none of us deserve.

The film, directed by Craig Brewer, is a rehashing of the 1988 original, with Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall back reprising all their iconic roles. The problem though is that Eddie Murphy long ago lost his comedy fastball and his comedy caddy Arsenio Hall never had a fastball to begin with.

Another obstacle for the film is that cultural shifts over the last 33 years have created an audience of fragiles too delicate to handle any raunch, so the bare breasts and R rating from 1988 are history and now Eddie Murphy is forced to live in a rather tepid PG-13 world which is woke approved.

The end result of all this is that Coming 2 America is egregiously and remarkably unfunny. The lone bright spot in the nearly two-hour endeavor is the brief scene when Murphy and Hall don the make-up and bring back their famous barbershop alter egos and take some digs at the absurdity of the woke world we all inhabit, but besides that minor bit of humor, there isn’t a laugh to be found.

A big reason why there are no laughs is because there are a lot of painfully unfunny people in the movie.

For example, Leslie Jones plays a long lost and forgotten one night stand from Prince Akeem’s old days, and she is beyond dreadful. Ms. Jones’ career success is one of the great mysteries of the modern age as she has never, ever been funny…not even by accident. To her credit, at least she is consistent in being aggressively awful.

Jermaine Fowler plays Akeem’s bastard son LaVelle and seems like a survivor of charisma bypass surgery. Fowler is so uninteresting and embarrassingly unfunny on-screen I would rather watch my own autopsy than suffer through watching him “act” again.

The gorgeous Kiki Layne plays Akeem’s princess daughter, and spearheads the girl power narrative that drives this jalopy right off the cliff. Layne is a beauty but she is as wooden and dull an actress as you’ll ever come across. Every scene she appears in comes to a resoundingly screeching halt as her dead eyes act like black holes sucking the life out of everything in their orbit.

There is no point in criticizing any of the forced plot points or the film’s groveling social politics, because none of those things would have matter if the damn thing were just funny. But sadly, Eddie Murphy is just not able to reignite that elusive comedy and charisma spark that propelled him to the heights of the entertainment industry nearly forty years ago.

Murphy is unimaginably rich, so he didn’t make Coming 2 America because he was short on the mortgage payments. I think Murphy made Coming 2 America and 2019’s underwhelming Dolemite is My Name, because he actually wanted to do something worthwhile once again.

I think the wheels began to come off the Murphy wagon when he stopped doing stand up comedy back at the end of the 80’s. Murphy was such a star that he became detached from real people and reality and it was easier not to do the hard work of being good at stand up…which takes a lot of hard work.

For years I’ve heard stories from dozens of people about Murphy’s could not care less work ethic on films in the 2000’s and early 2010’s. It’s not uncommon to hear actors and crew bitch about a star they’ve worked with, but the stories I kept hearing all told the same story. According to these folks Murphy was a lazy, entitled, ego maniac who did barely the bare minimum on movies. He even used to insist that a double be used for every shot he was in where he didn’t have dialogue…we aren’t talking over the shoulder stuff, we are talking Eddie wide shots and reaction shots stuff. Even for spoiled movie stars, this sort of thing is outrageous. T be clear, I don’t know if these claims are true - they might just be the result of the usual jealous sniping and bitching against stars, I just know I’ve heard them quite a bit.

In this context, it becomes apparent that Eddie Murphy stopped giving a shit about thirty years ago and only started giving a shit again in the last few years because his star had faded to the point where he wasn’t telling punchlines, he had become one. But during those decades of aggressively not giving a shit, Murphy lost the spark that made him so special back in the day, and now he can’t reignite it.

I think that sucks because the world is a better place when Eddie Murphy is Eddie Murphy and not some comedy eunuch churning out flaccid garbage like Coming 2 America. Sadly, I don’t think we are ever going to see Eddie Murphy be great again, and Coming 2 America is a prime exhibit making that case.

In conclusion, I really wanted Coming 2 America to be great but I would’ve been thrilled if it just boasted some quality Eddie Murphy moments. Sadly, the film isn’t anywhere near great, in fact, it is terrible. And worst of all Eddie Murphy looks entirely incapable of being Eddie Murphy anymore, which transformed Coming 2 America for me from being a bad comedy into being a profundly sad tragedy.

©2021