BEVERLY HILLS COP: AXEL F - July (Netflix)

[AndyDursin]

In lieu of general box-office declines, there will be more where this came from...

EXCLUSIVE: Beverly Hills Cop Axel Foley will come back to active duty…for Netflix. Paramount has made a one-time license deal — with an option for a sequel — that will enable Netflix to make the fourth installment of the film with Eddie Murphy and producer Jerry Bruckheimer. The studio had been developing a reboot for awhile. It is another example of studios striking inventive deals with Netflix at a time when long gestating sequels like The Shining followup Doctor Sleep, The Terminator: Dark Fate and Zombieland: Double Tap have been hard pressed to measure up to the grosses of their predecessors, with at least two of them in line to lose money because of the high cost of P&A.

This deal gives Netflix a sexy title with a big star and it gives Paramount an opportunity to reap revenue on a library title. Paramount launched the franchise in 1984 with the Martin Brest original, followed by a Tony Scott-directed second installment in 1987 and a third by John Landis in 1994.

https://deadline.com/2019/11/beverly-hi ... 202785458/

[Monterey Jack]

They should have pulled this with Charlie's Angels.

[AndyDursin]

You mean the latest "all men are evil" feminist retread from Hollywood?

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment ... franchise/

Already a bomb based on last night's in-take and headed right into the gutter...

[AndyDursin]

5 years later and this one is finally finished.

Looks looks more inviting than I expected. The entire old crew is back -- and Joseph Gordon-Levitt! Man he's taken quite a fall from the Christopher Nolan days.

[Monterey Jack]

Got the BHC trilogy on UHD recently, and watched the sequels for the first time. Uhhhh...

-Beverly Hills Cop (1984): 8.5/10

-Beverly Hills Cop II (1987): 4/10

-Beverly Hills Cop III (1994): 1.5/10



Martin Brest's 1984 action/comedy remains a fresh, ebullient blast of entertainment, a perfect vehicle for a young Eddie Murphy's lava-hot charisma and lickedy-split comic timing, but its two follow-ups are as disappointing as I've read about for years. Tony Scott's follow-up is like an enticingly colorful M&M candy shell with no chocolate inside, a slick, revved-up and soulless rehash of the first movie's fish out of water formula with too much routine smash & grab action mayhem and not enough of Murphy's ingratiatingly brash effrontery. All of the "stuff" that audiences liked about the original is here, in a souped-up, shiny container (and it does, indeed, look gorgeous, especially in this fresh 4K transfer), but, like Another 48 Hrs., it's a wan shadow of the original.

Yet it's a freaking masterpiece compared to John Landis' feeble, incredibly belated 1994 threequel, which may be the comedy veteran's career nadir (of course, I haven't seen Blues Brothers 2000... ). At least BHC II offered up some sumptuous eye candy and a few stray chuckles. These is not one single, solitary laugh to be found here, and Landis' staging of the action stuff is perfunctory, clumsy and completely lacking in any sense of tension. Murphy also looks bored as all hell, sleepwalking through the film with a listless indifference. The only impressive thing in this mess of a movie is seeing tubby Edgar from 24 pull off an on-camera cartwheel. Otherwise, this is even more dreadful than I had heard.

[AndyDursin]

I don't think III is great by any means but, for me, it's much more entertaining than II, which is as loud, unfunny and unlikeable as any big-studio comedy sequel that had ever been put out up to that point. It had Scott's slick lensing but his approach was all wrong, entirely wrong, for that material. III did not generate great reviews, but a few critics by and large did think it was at least more appealing than the assault on the senses that was II. They tried at least, and I liked the goofy theme park element and Landis' cameos. But it wasn't great, and by the mid '90s Murphy was churning out one dud after another so any goodwill it might've generated wasn't there.

Either way -- this one is getting decent notices so it's something to check out this weekend. Can't be worse than COMING 2 AMERICA!

[Edmund Kattak]

I just watched the first 10 minutes and loved what I saw so far. I will wait until tonight when we can sit down and watch it in full.

[Eric W.]

I liked it.

As someone who is completely down and mystified by the whole "let's do a sequel way too late and after the fact" trend this is now the second time now I am pleasantly forced to concede that they did a good job here. The first of course is Top Gun Maverick.

They were smart here. Reconnect with characters, see what happened to them, put them into some new shenanigans, don't try to reinvent the wheel, and give the series a better looking send off vs part 3 which was 30 years (?!) ago.

Eddie Murphy looks incredible at 63 years old. Hard to believe. It's a fun watch. It was more Beverly Hills Cop. No more. No less.

I still haven't decided which trend is dislike more: Prequelitis or "way too late/after the fact sequelitis." Time to move forward Hollywood. Get some new ideas.

[Edmund Kattak]

Perhaps "Top Gun Maverick" was the archetype for the on and off delay of this picture. Since Bruckheimer got the success with Maverick, this may have been a reason for the delay = to capture that same recipe for success.

[AndyDursin]

I watched it last night. Fun for about 2/3 of the way, then it became tedious when it relied on the action element to push through to the end. That's when the choreography and editing paled in comparison with the older films -- there's a real vanilla, unremarkable component to the action scenes in the movie, and it's something modern movies just don't do as well.

The premise and casting was sound. The girl who played his daughter was really superb -- it would've been easy for the part to come off as combative and bitchy, instead she was sympathetic and convincing, projecting a quiet confidence instead of the typical Disney+ "girlboss" we usually see. Murphy worked well off her too. Gordon-Levitt was a nice addition but it was sort of odd how he disappeared from most of the material at the end. All the old roles were nicely integrated, especially Paul Rieser, who seemed like he cared especially. The villainy from Bacon was meh, I felt once his role kicked in, the movie sagged.

Nothing wrong with the "mix tape" soundtrack of all the old songs (I still think "Shakedown" from II is the tops) and Lorne Balfe's Faltermeyer homage was fine. 7/10 from here. Not TOP GUN MAVERICK quality but still pretty good all things considered.