Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F review – fish-out-of-water Eddie Murphy chases past glories

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Murphy’s maverick cop – and his theme music – are back to fight corruption, but four decades on there’s little energy to enliven their formulaic reunion Eddie Murphy isn’t finished yet – as he proved with his barnstormer of a performance as Blaxploitation pioneer Rudy Ray Moore in Dolemite Is My Name . But there’s something a bit tired and formulaic about this further go-around for his iconic Detroit cop Axel Foley from the Beverly Hills Cop action-comedy franchise which 40 years ago made Murphy an explosive Hollywood star – and whose catchy Axel F theme became an 80s anthem, duly revived here. He’s back for the fourth film, yet again leaving his Detroit turf to be a scruffy fish-out-of-water in the hilariously chi-chi world of Beverly Hills, yet again wryly noticing from the wheel of his car, on the way in, a montage of all the crazy California stuff, including a car registration plate reading: PRE-NUP. Axel’s grownup lawyer daughter Jane (Taylour Paige) is in Beverly Hills, menace
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Bad Boys: Ride or Die review – Will Smith bromance goes big on Pointless Action Explosions

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Smith and Martin Lawrence may be in the career wilderness but the serial rule-breakers are back with a winning cop comedy

Martin Lawrence, America’s lost hero of broad comedy, has had his movie profile kept on a kind of life-support by the near 30-year-old Bad Boys franchise; but some of us furtive Lawrence fans still sheepishly bond over re-watchings of the great man’s masterpiece, his 2001 merrie England adventure Black Knight alongside Tom Wilkinson. Now Lawrence appears in the fourth Bad Boys film in the remarkable situation of being in better career shape than his Oscar-winning co-star Will Smith, who is still in disgrace for the Slap Heard Around the World and then, just as importantly, the F-Bombs Heard Around the World So Everyone Knew the Slap Was Real.

This film’s production having been delayed by The Controversy, Lawrence and Smith are back as rule-breaking cops Marcus Burnett and Mike Lowrey; first seen in 1995, they are now the Bad Late-Middle Aged Men. Our two heroes end this film by nostalgically invoking the lyrics of Run DMC’s Peter Piper: they’re not “bad meaning bad, but bad meaning good”.

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