Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F’ on Netflix, the Mostly Enjoyable Return of Eddie Murphy’s Beloved Character

Just because Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (now streaming on Netflix) arrives on just the other side of the EDDIE MURPHNAISSANCE (which began with Dolemite is My Name, peaked with his 2021 return to SNL and wrapped with Coming 2 America) doesn’t mean it lacks pop-cultural cache. Think about it: Axel Foley is easily Eddie Murphy’s most beloved character (barely edging out Norbit, of course), and the movie is very, very long in the making, arriving, after many pre-production fits and starts, a whopping 30 years after the failure-on-all-fronts that was Beverly Hills Cop III. Now, this is the point in the review where I threaten punches-in-the-nose for anyone using the term “legacyquel,” grouse on behalf of movie theaters, where this thing probably would have been a pretty sizable hit, and warn you that the “Axel F” theme song will resume its status as the prevailing earworm in yer brain before posing the big question: Is this nostagliafest of a movie a party all the time, or just a banana in your tailpipe?

BEVERLY HILLS COP: AXEL F: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Glenn Frey on the soundtrack. The gritty sights of Detroit. Eddie Murphy at the wheel of a vintage Chevy Nova. This better not be the same damn movie except everyone is older and uses smartphones, goddammit. And it isn’t, at least not down to the letter, because Detroit police detective Axel Foley (Murphy) has an adult daughter, a new development we’ll get to as soon as we get past the opening sequence where Axel busts up a robbery at a Detroit Red Wings game and ends up chasing the bad guys in a City of Detroit snowplow and destroying vast swaths of the City of Detroit with that snowplow. The sequence has nothing to do with the rest of the movie, but it’s kind of funny and kind of exciting and punctuated with a kind of familiar Bob Seger song, and this is the kind of movie that has to open with such a sequence because it’s very much part of the ’80s action-comedy formula, which is something that shalt not be deviated from, under penalty of eternal divine punishment and/or threatened cancellations of Netflix subscriptions.

Once the plot gets rolling, you may wish you didn’t have to keep up with it, because it’s convoluted, and who wants to do any heavy lifting while watching a Beverly Hills Cop movie? We’re here to see Eddie Murphy fast-talk his way into and out of trouble, and hopefully laugh at it, not sort the pointless details of a dirty-cop conspiracy Axel’s daughter finds herself entangled in. They’re estranged, Axel and Jane (Taylour Paige of Zola fame). She’s a defense attorney in Beverly Hills, and when she points a finger at a crooked cop, she suddenly finds herself in a car that’s dangling precariously off the edge of a tall parking ramp, with the implication that they won’t be so nice the next time. And so Axel flies out to Beverly Hills to investigate, and once again show these well-tanned tiny-dog-having rich-ass snobs how things are done in De-TROIT.

Now, without a cast reunion, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F clearly has no reason to exist. So Axel reunites with his old cop pals Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and now-BHPD chief John Taggart (John Ashton), and the writers eventually find a way to wedge flamboyant goofball Serge (Bronson Pinchot) into the plot. Axel weasels back into Jane’s life – Axel weasels into everything, remember – hoping to get her out of this jam and work through their issues. He also pairs up with good cop Sam Abbott (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who happens to be Jane’s ex, and verbally tangos with BHPD captain Cade Grant (Kevin Bacon), who smirks like the villain he so obviously is. Comical violence, lots of cussin’, callbacks to the old movies and bits of self-referential dialogue ensue – and honestly, we’re not surprised by any of it.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Again: LEGACYQUEL IS A BANNED WORD AROUND THESE HERE PARTS. Axel F and Coming 2 America are almost the exact same movie. I caught some Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny vibes in the wacky-vehicle chases (although Axel uses very little CG!). Thankfully, it doesn’t take the more-is-better approach like the overstuffed Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. And as far as Remembering The ’80s goes, it doesn’t hold a candle to Top Gun: Maverick, which is easily the best of this type of movie.

Performance Worth Watching: Bacon is in full-flight smarm 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 kismet shit for your ass!” (hey, it was pretty funny in context) in the singular Eddie Murphy style we used to mimic oh-so-inappropriately on the playground in 1986, then you need your head examined.

Memorable Dialogue: One of Axel’s top-shelf quips: “I do some of my best work when I’m suspended.”

Sex and Skin: None – nude boobs went extinct in 2011, you know.

Our Take: Forty years later and I still have yet to penetrate the mysteries of “The Neutron Dance.” It seems to express a yearning to break free from constraints and/or oppression of some kind, but what’s with the vague Cold War-era metaphor? Is the word selection intentional and meaningful or just nonsense poetry? I guess one must come to the conclusion that the Neutron Dance is whatever you need the Neutron Dance to be. 

Anyway. Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F brings back all the old familiar faces and all the old familiar soundtrack cues and all the old familiar story beats, albeit with a bit of Big Dad Energy from Axel himself as he tries to repair the 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 at least it’s something different, a little bit of nuance applied to a guy who’s beloved more for his endless supply of witty quips than a character with any real emotional depth. Axel has always been the smartest guy in the room, but the most sensitive? Never. And he still isn’t, although he proves to be softening with age, as many of us do, which makes us like him a little bit more. 

So Murphy maintains the more lovable elements of the character while growing Axel just enough to give us the impression that he’s not a staid, empty human being. If this sounds like I’m being generous to a movie that’s essentially shameless rehash bullseyeing our nostalgia cockles, well, that’s because I am. The only other slight departure from previously established Beverly Hills Cop tropes is the all-too-modern self-referential comedy, which doesn’t work nearly as well – Gordon-Levitt is assigned the task of reviewing the files documenting Axel’s previous trips to Beverly Hills, and punctuates the spiel with the line, “And then ’94 – not your finest hour.” There’s also a bit where Axel starts shoveling one of his signature piles of specious bull roar and gives up in the middle of it, saying he’s too tired (this one’s funnier, at least). 

I’m tempted to say such meta-callouts bring us out of the movie, but the entire movie exists to bring us out of the movie. The yearning to rewatch the original Beverly Hills Cop is pretty much unavoidable when Axel F plays like a re-recording of greatest hits, and an attempt to recharge the Eddie Murphy live wire of 1984 (he was all of 22 years old when he made the first film). The Remember When of it all is the reason this movie exists – and extends to the action sequences, which director Mark Molloy mostly, and refreshingly, renders with non-computer-generated cars and helicopters, even if they lack the visual verve needed to make them truly memorable.

But progress is for art, not entertainment, which is very much where this franchise resides. And on that level, Axel F is amiable, functional and enjoyable in a mostly disposable way (which, frankly, is the goal for pretty much every quasi-blockbuster Netflix churns out, with varying degrees of success). Murphy reportedly wanted to eradicate the long-lingering metallic aftertaste of the universally derided Beverly Hills Cop III, and the new film works just fine on that level, too. Murphy seemed to be burning to do this Neutron Dance once again, and even after all these years, he still shows flashes of the sparkling footwork that made him a one-in-a-billion superstar. For many, that will be enough.

Our Call: Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is a bona-fide B-minus, a slice of cold pizza that’s far from fresh but nevertheless tastes just fine because you know what you’re going to get out of it and you pulled it out of the fridge and ate it and didn’t have to exert any energy warming it up. Maybe that analogy doesn’t quite work? Whatever – STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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