Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F Review: Eddie Murphy Movie is Unfunny and Forgettable

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F Review | Leisurebyte

Director: Mark Molloy

Date Created: 2024-07-04 04:30

Editor's Rating:
2

Pros

• The old gang is back and that has its moments.
• Fun action sequences make for good entertainment.

Cons

• Repetitive and stale plot.
• The humour is forgettable and dated.

– No Spoilers –

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F Review: Netflix is bringing the beloved Beverly Hills Cop movie series back on the map with Beverly Hills Cop 4 or Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F with Eddie Murphy reprising the role of the beloved cop. The movie has a runtime of 115 minutes.

Axel Foley comes back to Beverly Hills after his daughter, Jane, is threatened in connection to a case that she is overseeing involving a young man and a dead cop. When he lands back in his old haunts, Axel quickly comes to realise that nothing is as it seems. Teaming up with Jane along with Detective Bobby Abbott, John Taggart and Billy Rosewood, he must go into the depths in order to uncover a conspiracy.

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is a simple-minded movie that desperately tries to capture the magic of the first movie in every frame. The 2024 release comes at a time when we have already seen a ton of similar films, some good and some bad, and thus the nostalgia factor can’t push this project to become as good as one would expect. The movie, following Axel and his motley crew trying to get to the bottom of a conspiracy involving corrupt cops, isn’t charming nor very funny and there are gaps in the story that drag so badly that you wonder why they were left in.

The movie’s screenplay leaves much to be desired, so much so that when you reach the halfway mark, it feels like you have been watching this for a long time. It’s just that the plot is cliched with nothing new to offer. As a brand new movie, you’d expect something to happen that catches your eye – either something funny or thrilling. But in spite of the increase in action sequences, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is neither thrilling nor particularly funny. The storylines involving the cops don’t garner much attention because it’s nothing new so you figure out the twists and turns early and the emotional storyline involving Axel and his relationship with Jane, although given much attention, isn’t deep enough to catch our fancy. The humour, too, feels dated and uninteresting.

Given the nostalgia factor, Beverly Hills Cop 4 should’ve been an easy watch. But it’s just so boring and repetitive that you can feel the lack of a plot in every scene. You want to be thrilled and laugh while at it but the movie is so painfully slow and obvious that you don’t have an option but to skip through to the interesting parts. Every twist is expected and every scene feels like it’s out of a similar movie from not too long ago. The problem is that it tries to be a lot of things and ends up being none of them. The plot is whimsical and meandering, with random things happening at random moments that are so out of left field that they seem unbelievable and stupid.

Kevin Bacon is the antagonist of Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F and although Bacon that be chilling in some movies, this one isn’t it. We hardly see him and when we do, he is planting cocaine in car trunks and regurgitating the usual villain dialogues that make you lose faith in humanity. The old crew bring some comedic elements to the screen but it’s very few and far in between. Murphy tries his best to be the street-smart cop that we know and love but honestly, there’s not much charm there that will make you want to dust off the love that you felt for the first film.

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F Review: Final Thoughts

This Eddie Murphy passion project is forgettable and uninteresting because it neither tries to get out of the box nor the shadow of its former self. It doesn’t reinvent itself in any way, making it a repetitive mess that doesn’t make you laugh. Although the action sequences are plenty and somewhat fine, it doesn’t carry a movie like this, making us check the runtime every few minutes hoping it’d be over.

Also Read: House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 3 Review: The Burning Mill