Eddie Murphy recently said in an interview, “It was a hard one. I did Axel Foley when I was in my 20s. I am not in my 20s anymore. It was an action movie. So it was a rough one. But we got through it.” He is 63 now, and it shows. In the original Beverly Hills Cop, he was hanging on the back of a moving truck, flying around the city while gripping onto the loading door. In the second film, he was leaping and dodging over banisters and stairs, running from Ziggy’s holograph. We’ll pretend the third one doesn’t exist, but in Axel F, he was lumbering around like he was recently in a presidential debate. Everything from the movements, the story, and even the dialogue was slow. It felt like I was watching movie night in an old folks’ home. I half expected to hear someone behind me yell, “What did he say? Make it louder!”

Beverly Hills Cop I & II are incredibly fun popcorn movies. They’re full of action, good music, humor, and world-building. The characters are engaging, and you feel bad when they get hurt or run into issues. In this most recent installment, it felt like a final project of an aspiring college filmmaker. The environment was far too clean and incoherent. Most of the music was a copy/paste of the originals, which is fine, but it didn’t help give this movie a life of its own.

I feel like a viewer should be led around the world as if they’re a part of it. This is how we get movie-goers into that zone where the real world melts away, and you are as involved in the story as the characters on screen are. It would have helped Axel F tremendously if it weren’t simply a collection of scenes. Things only happened when it was convenient to progress the story, and the story wasn’t a particularly interesting one.

His daughter in the movie was a plank of wood. She had a few moments that looked like there was emotion underneath her stiff and dull exterior, but not nearly enough to generate any sort of interest in her continued existence. This was probably the fault of our soon-to-be-graduating director. The saddest part about the whole thing was that Taggart & Rosewood looked so incredibly old. What the hell happened to Taggart? Why did I watch this? Why do I watch movies that remind me of my own mortality? Why parade around how powerless and frail our childhood heroes now are? I hate this lack of creativity that rehashes old properties into mediocre sequels simply to cash in on nostalgia.

Skip this movie.

On that note, skip all the nostalgia bait garbage we’ve seen as of late. Here are some other notable examples you can also skip:

• Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always
• Jurassic World
• Anything Star Wars
• Bill & Ted Face the Music
• Independence Day: Resurgence
• Space Jam: A New Legacy
• Terminator: Dark Fate
• The Matrix Resurrections
• Men in Black: International
• Coming 2 America
• A Christmas Story Christmas
• Charlie’s Angels

There are many more, but you get the idea.

RIP John Ashton

February 22, 1948 – September 26, 2024

Rating: ⭐⭐