BEFORE: Another day at the Tribeca Film Festival yesterday, working behind the scenes, just keeping the traffic flowing, doing head counts and maintaining event notes. I spotted David Morse and Aisha Tyler hanging out in the lobby before screenings, and then later on the red carpet Brendan Fraser was there with Ellen Burstyn and director Darren Aronofsky, for an anniversary screening of "Requiem for a Dream". I'd met Aronofsky twice before, like really met him and talked to him, once in a movie theater in Boston a long time ago, and then again at the New York Comic Con in 2007. I do kind of miss the old job, where I occasionally met famous directors and actors at Sundance or other events, but at the newer job I see more celebrities overall, however there's just no direct contact. Still, my life list has probably tripled in size since starting the theater job in 2021, and more is better, right?
Luis Guzman carries over from "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island".
THE PLOT: Axel Foley returns to Beverly Hills after his daughter's life is threatened, for a family reunion that includes old pals John Taggart and Billy Rosewood to uncover a conspiracy.
AFTER: This is another film that I did not intentionally program for Father's Day, I selected this just as an Eddie Murphy film, and one that would lead me to more father-based films of his, but it's accidentally perfectly on theme, as Axel Foley visits his estranged, adult daughter, who's a lawyer practicing in Los Angeles. Well, it's been 40 years since the first "Beverly Hills Cop" movie and 30 years since the last one got released, so sure, it's possible that he might have an adult daughter now, but it's still weird that there was no mention of a daughter before, and can you be a lawyer at the age of 30? She had to have been born RIGHT after the end of "Beverly Hills Cop III", and was Axel even in a relationship then? You can cram this character's back-story into those missing years, but it still feels a bit forced.
It feels like somebody wanted the franchise to return to form, sure, maybe the third film felt a little bit off-track, but does that justify using the exact same soundtrack here as was heard in the first film? Seriously, in the first 30 minutes of this sequel we hear "The Heat Is On" by Glenn Frey, "Shakedown" by Bob Seger and "The Neutron Dance" by the Pointer Sisters. And you know that "Axel F" theme by Harold Faltermeyer won't be far behind - did nobody write any new music since 1984? Does somebody get a discount if they go back to the same artists and songwriters? Or is this just a quick short-hand way to try to evoke the feeling of the first film? I'll bet even the biggest fans of this franchise would have been OK with never hearing "Neutron Dance" again, just saying.
Look, it's been a while since I watched any of the "Beverly Hills Cop" films, I think maybe I watched the first one the most over the years, and maybe I watched the third one once? Don't worry, all the old characters are back in action for (maybe) the last time - Taggart, Billy Rosewood, and Chief Friedman back in Detroit. Even Serge shows up, he was that fashion designer who talked funny and the filmmakers believed that he was very popular somehow. I guess if it ain't broke, don't fix it, just add the adult daughter, her ex-boyfriend who is also a cop, and a bunch of corrupt policemen who deal cocaine, which is another throwback to the 80's. We couldn't find a more recent drug than coke? Not fentanyl or meth or semaglutides? Botox? (It is Beverly Hills, after all...) Ketamine's having a moment right now, why not that? Right, we don't want to mess up the 80's throwback vibe.
I feel like this franchise did the dirty cop thing already, though - and I didn't have any trouble guessing who the big villain here is, I guessed it from just one glance at the cast list, and you probably will too. You just don't hire THAT actor unless you're going to give him a big role and let him play a villain, it's kind of like "X-Men: First Class" in that regard. Axel Foley probably figured out who the dirty cop was five minutes after he got off the plane from Detroit, what took him entirely too long, however, was figuring out that his friend Billy had been kidnapped, for some reason he had to leave unanswered voice mails for FIVE DAYS before he even considered that possibility.
Axel's daughter is in danger because she's representing a client accused of murdering an undercover police officer, and Billy Rosewood contacted Axel because of that, and apparently he's the one with evidence that proves her client is innocent, because the dirty cop drug and money-laundering cartel is really responsible. Only now he's missing and nobody else knows where the evidence is. After the film's second destructive car chase through city streets, Axel is arrested, even though he should be a legendary honored guest in Beverly Hills by now. The fact that he isn't is something of a NITPICK POINT, like he should either be on good terms with the L.A.P.D. or not, the story can't have it both ways. To create the conflict, Taggart needs to be an honest precinct captain who somehow believes in the wrong people, and that's the plot straining itself by bending over backwards to make this happen.
The fences all need to be mended here - between Taggart and Rosewood, between Axel Foley and his daughter, Jane, who doesn't even use his last name, and jeez it might have just been simpler if we could have started the story in a better place, everyone just could have gotten a lot more done instead of having to take all this time to re-hash their past mistakes. Same thing with Jane and her ex-boyfriend, Detective Abbott. They've got to fix THAT relationship, too, so why don't we just have one big therapy group for everybody so they can all get over themselves and get some police work done, OK? This is even worse than "Bad Boys: Ride or Die", with all this family stuff getting in the way of locking up the criminals.
Eventually Mr. Foley acts like a Dad again, even if it's for the first time. In the big climactic shoot-out, he jumps in front of his daughter and takes a bullet for her. It's a nice gesture, even if it means the rest of the movie is going to be hospital scenes while he recovers and he may not be headed back to Detroit at the end. Good, because apparently everyone in Beverly Hills tends to forget about him when he's not there. It might be well past time for Axel to retire from police work and just move to California for good, as both the actor and the character must be in their 60's.
Directed by Mark Molloy
Also starring Eddie Murphy (last seen in "Butterfly in the Sky"), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (last seen in "Havoc" (2005)), Taylour Paige (last seen in "Brothers"), Judge Reinhold (last seen in "Gremlins"), John Ashton (last seen in "Middle Men"), Paul Reiser (last seen in "I Do... Until I Don't"), Bronson Pinchot (last seen in "She's Having a Baby"), Kevin Bacon (last seen in "Belushi"), Damien Diaz, Mark Pellegrino (last seen in "Say It Isn't So"), Christopher McDonald (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Tony Jones, Ed Cali, Brandon Edward Butler, Kyle S. More (last seen in "Vice" (2018)), Kenneth Nance Jr. (last seen in "The Front Runner"), D.A. Obahor (last seen in "57 Seconds"), Jon Lee Richardson, Bee-Be Smith (last seen in "Bulworth"), Keith Pillow, Christopher Matthew Cook (last seen in "Rebel Moon - Part One; A Child of Fire"), Princess Elmore (last seen in "Till"), Patricia Belcher (last seen in "Father Stu"), Daniel Kaemon, Walter Belenky, David Rowden, Joseph Aviel (last seen in "Divergent'), James Preston Rogers (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), Chantal Nchako, Bria L. Murphy, Giovannie Cruz, Sean Liang, Natalie Ford, Deon Griffin, Suzanne Ford (last seen in "Manson Family Vacation"), Nasim Pedrad (last seen in "Desperados"), Sarah Abrell, Affion Crockett (last seen in "The Wedding Ringer").
RATING: 6 out of 10 car doors knocked off by a snowplow
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