Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is about as lustrous a sequel as I've seen in many a moon. I mean the film looks like a million bucks ($150 million to be exact). 90210, well it appears like it got a makeover, shiny and gleaming with the vivid sun just beating down. So yeah, here's "Axel F's" gist: Axel Foley's daughter's life is in danger, Axel's bud Billy Rosewood has been kidnapped, and there's drug cartel/dirty cop stuff going on too. Yup, just another reason for Detroit's favorite dick to find his way back to the "Garden Spot of World". "This isn't my first time in Beverly Hills". You don't say.
So OK, where would I rank "Axel F" in the Beverly Hills Cop canon? Well, it's a heck of a lot better than Beverly Hills Cop III (yup, I've seen that abomination). Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F brings in yet a third new director for the fourth flick in the franchise, Australian Mark Molloy. Molloy, well he's sloppy staging shootout sequences but happily bleeds nostalgia like a gash wound, using songs from the first two installments while bringing back all the old characters and similar plotlines (Axel gets arrested again, Axel manipulates various situations, Axel revels in citywide damage). "Axel F", well it sometimes gives you the warm fuzz fuzzies from what went down almost 40 years ago. It's just a little more modernized, not quite as funny, and not quite as biting.
All in all, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is not as bad as I expected it to be (go back to second paragraph). And star Eddie Murphy, well he's more over the top than ever (actually I did expect that). The film definitely feels like a Beverly Hills Cop endeavor but its shortcomings are that it parodies the whole Beverly Hills Cop shtick rather than encircling it. Beverly Hills Cop I and II had a certain trenchancy to them, a grand style and some ripeness. "Axel F" just feels more like the lampooned, Kidz Bop version. "Cop" minus a half.
Written by Jesse Burleson
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