Just because Beverly Hills Police: Axel F. (now streaming on Netflix) comes right across the EDDIE MURPHNAISSANCE (which began with Dolemite is my namepeaked with His return in 2021 to SNL and wrapped with Arriving in America) doesn’t mean it lacks pop cultural cachet. Think about it: Axel Foley is easily Eddie Murphy’s most beloved character (just edging out Norbit, of course), and the movie has been in the works for a long, long time, arriving, after many pre-production ups and downs, a whopping 30 years after the failure on all fronts that was A detective on the loose in Beverly Hills IIINow, this is the point in the review where I threaten to punch anyone who uses the term “legacy sequel” in the nose, complain on behalf of movie theaters where this thing likely would have been a sizable hit, and warn you that the “Axel F” title track will reclaim its status as the predominant earworm in your brain before I pose the big question: Is this nostalgia flick a party all the way through, or just a banana in your tailpipe?
BEVERLY HILLS POLICE: AXEL FSTREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: Glenn Frey on the soundtrack. The gritty visuals of Detroit. Eddie Murphy behind the wheel of a classic Chevy Nova. This better not be the same damn movie, except everyone’s older and using smartphones, dammit. And it isn’t, at least not literally, because Detroit police detective Axel Foley (Murphy) has an adult daughter, a development we’ll discover as soon as we get past the opening sequence in which Axel busts up a robbery at a Detroit Red Wings game and ends up chasing bad guys in a Detroit snowplow and destroying vast swaths of the city with said snowplow. The sequence has nothing to do with the rest of the movie, but it’s fun and exciting and is punctuated with a sort of familiar Bob Seger song, and this is the kind of movie that has to open with a sequence like that because it’s part of the ’80s action-comedy formula, which is something you shouldn’t deviate from, under penalty of eternal pine punishment and/or threats of Netflix subscription cancellations.
Once the plot starts to unfold, you may wish you didn’t have to follow it, because it’s complicated and who wants to do heavy lifting while watching a movie? Beverly Hills Police Movie? We’re here to watch Eddie Murphy talk his way into and out of trouble and hopefully laugh about it, not to sort out the meaningless details of a corrupt police conspiracy that Axel’s daughter gets caught up in. They’re estranged, Axel and Jane (Taylour Paige of Zola She’s a defense attorney in Beverly Hills, and when she points the finger at a corrupt cop, she suddenly finds herself in a car hanging precariously over the edge of a high parking ramp, with the implication that they won’t be so nice next time. And so Axel flies to Beverly Hills to investigate and, once again, show these rich, well-tanned snobs with little dogs how things are done in Detroit.
Now, without a cast reunion, Beverly Hills Police: Axel F. Clearly, he has no reason to exist. So Axel reunites with his old cop buddies Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and now-BHPD Chief John Taggart (John Ashton), and the writers finally find a way to sneak quirky goofball Serge (Bronson Pinchot) into the plot. Axel sneaks back into Jane’s life (Axel sneaks into everything, remember) in hopes of getting her out of this jam and sorting out her problems. He also hooks up with good cop Sam Abbott (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who happens to be Jane’s ex, and verbally communicates with BHPD Captain Cade Grant (Kevin Bacon), who smirks like the villain he obviously is. There’s comic violence, plenty of swearing, references to old movies, and bits of self-referential dialogue, and honestly, none of it surprises us.
What movies will it remind you of? Again: LEGACYQUEL IS A FORBIDDEN WORD IN THESE PARTS. Axel F and Arriving in America They are almost exactly the same movie. I saw some Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny vibrations in the crazy vehicle chases (although Axel It uses very little computer-generated graphics!). Fortunately, it doesn’t take the “the more, the merrier” approach, like the overstuffed Ghostbusters: The Frozen Empire. And as far as Remembering the 80s goes, it doesn’t compare to… Top Gun: Maverickwhich is easily the best of this type of film.
Performance worth watching: Bacon is in full flattery mode here as the greasy antagonist, get it? Greasy bacon? – but if you’re not here to bask in the joy of Eddie Murphy ad-libbing lines like “This is some shitty fate for your ass!” (hey, it was pretty funny in context) in the singular Eddie Murphy style we used to so inappropriately imitate on the playground in 1986, then you need to have your head examined.
Memorable dialogue: One of Axel’s wittiest quotes: “I do some of my best work when I’m suspended.”
Sex and skin: None. Bare boobs went extinct in 2011, you know?
Our opinion: Forty years later, I still haven’t managed to fathom the mysteries of “The Neutron Dance.” It seems to express a longing for freedom from restrictions and/or oppressions of some kind, but what about the vague Cold War-era metaphor? Is the word choice intentional and meaningful or just meaningless poetry? I guess one must come to the conclusion that the Neutron Dance is whatever one needs it to be.
Anyway. Beverly Hills Police: Axel F. It brings back all the old familiar faces and all the old soundtrack cues and all the old familiar story beats, albeit with a bit of Axel’s own Big Dad Energy thrown in as he tries to repair his thorny relationship with his daughter (in a rather vague, semi-satisfying way). I’m not sure if it’s an improvement on the other Big D Energy Axel deployed in the previous films, but it’s at least something different, a bit of nuance applied to a guy who’s loved more for his endless supply of witty quips than as a character with any real emotional depth. Axel has always been the smartest guy in the room — but the most sensitive? Ever. And he’s still not, though he does show that he’s mellowing with age, like many of us, which makes us like him a little more.
Thus, Murphy maintains the more lovable elements of the character while growing Axel enough to give us the impression that he is not a staid, empty human being. If this sounds like I am being generous to a film that is essentially a shameless rehash that targets our feelings of nostalgia, well, that’s because I am. The only other slight deviation from what has previously been established Beverly Hills Police Tropes is the overly modern, self-referential comedy that doesn’t work all that well: Gordon-Levitt is tasked with going through files documenting Axel’s previous trips to Beverly Hills, and he punctuates the speech with the line, “And then ’94, not your finest hour.” There’s also a bit where Axel starts smacking one of his signature stacks of deceptive bull roars and gives up halfway through, saying he’s too tired (this one is funnier, at least).
I’m tempted to say that these meta-memories take us out of the movie, but The whole movie exists to take us out of the movie. The longing to see the original again Beverly Hills Police It is practically inevitable when Axel F The film feels like a greatest-hits re-recording and an attempt to recapture the lively energy of Eddie Murphy in 1984 (he was 22 when he made the first film). The “Remember When” is this movie’s raison d’être, and it extends to the action sequences, which director Mark Molloy renders mostly — and refreshingly — with non-CGI cars and helicopters, even if they lack the visual oomph needed to make them truly memorable.
But progress is for art, not entertainment, which is precisely what makes this franchise stand out. And on that level, Axel F It’s kind, functional, and likable in a mostly throwaway way (which, frankly, is the goal of virtually every blockbuster Netflix produces, to varying degrees of success). Murphy reportedly wanted to eradicate the lingering metallic aftertaste of the universally derided A detective on the loose in Beverly Hills IIIAnd the new film works very well on that level, too. Murphy seemed eager to do this Neutron Dance again, and even after all these years, he still shows flashes of the brilliant footwork that made him a once-in-a-billion superstar. For many, that will be enough.
Our calling: Beverly Hills Police: Axel F. It’s a real B-minus, a cold slice of pizza that’s far from fresh but still tastes good because you know what you’re getting out of it and you just took it out of the fridge and ate it and didn’t have to go to any lengths to heat it up. Maybe that analogy doesn’t quite work? Whatever: PASS IT ON.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.