I loved the original Beverly Hills Cop and was OK with the two sequels, the third less than the second. So I had to watch Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.
Eh. But the "Axel F" theme still does it for me.
Writing in Variety (7.2.24), Owen Gleiberman admits that he never really like “action comedies.” With that in mind, I offer you some paragraphs from his thoughtful and informative review:
What the movie is really out to tap into is that old 1980s “high-powered” life-is-a-blockbuster feeling. The ’80s, at least in popular culture, were the definition of a carefree decade (in terms of movies, it could have been called: How we learned to stop worrying and love the popcorn schlock on steroids). And “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.” is engineered to make us feel, for a couple of hours, as carefree now as we did then. That’s why the whole cash-grab tackiness of the movie isn’t necessarily a liability. It’s actually part of the package.
I’ve always thought the story of how the original “Beverly Hills Cop” came to be was significant — that it was conceived as a straight-up police thriller starring Sylvester Stallone, and then, once Eddie Murphy came aboard, it was turned into a comedy. The motormouth effrontery of Murphy’s early-’80s screen personality, back when he still radiated joy in what he was doing, held the movie together, but “Beverly Hills Cop” was always a patchy, catch-as-catch-can hybrid. And now, with “Axel F.,” a parade of watchable clichés (not just retro-cop-thriller clichés but Eddie Murphy clichés) staged by director Mark Molloy in a slovenly utilitarian style, the series comes full circle: the product/schlock of the ’80s meets the product/schlock of Netflix. Welcome to nostalgia minus the soul!
There’s more at the link, worth reading.
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