Featured Movies
Partners
Beverly Hills Cop
Same schtick, different film. Eddie Murphy returns to crack jokes and catch crooks in this unlikeable sequel
Like the left-overs from last night's meal, Beverly Hills Cop II contains the same constituent elements as Beverly Hills Cop but is an unappetising, congealed mess. There's no attempt to alter the recipe that made the first film so successful - with impressive literalism, Beverly Hills Cop II charts Eddie Murphy's second trip to Beverly Hills - but by re-heating the material, they've destroyed the distinctive flavour of the original. Borrowing a staple plot, the film returns Axel Foley (Murphy) to California to find the person who gunned down his friend Bogomil (Cox). Teaming up with his old colleagues Rosewood (Reinhold) and Taggart (Ashton), he soon finds himself surrounded by clich??s like 'the shadowy European arms dealer' (Prochnow) and 'the statuesque female assassin' (Nielsen), who are both engaged in a convoluted plot that Axel must foil. Tony Scott was the wrong choice to helm a comedy/action movie. It's obvious he doesn't understand humour (or at least the intentional variety: treated as a parody of the 80's action movie, this is hilarious) and he concentrates on making the film look like a car commercial, leaving the jokes up to Murphy. But unrestrained, the star simply turns up the volume and blusters through his scenes. None of his comic jabs connects and after a while, he becomes simply annoying. He got paid for wasting his talent: make sure you don't pay for wasting your time. Verdict Loud, dumb and pointless, it's movies like Beverly Hills Cop II that give sequels a bad name. |
