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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I Used to Be Funny review – Rachel Sennott can’t save messy PTSD drama

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The Shiva Baby and Bodies, Bodies, Bodies standout goes serious in an uneven and at times frustrating combination of disparate tones and genre

There’s a particular, distinctly online note – dead-eyed, chaotic, teetering between hyper self-consciousness and delusional confidence – that comedian Rachel Sennott can hit so effectively it will temporarily and memorably spark its container: Twitter, where she rose to prominence as a self-aware zillennial comedy It Girl; Bodies Bodies Bodies, where she provided the bulk of the horror comedy’s actual zingers; The Idol, where her bit part as a pop star’s assistant was one of the misbegotten HBO series’ few highlights. As a lead – in Emma Seligman’s claustrophobic feature Shiva Baby and, less successfully, in Seligmans’ follow-up comedy Bottoms – Sennott stretched her shtick but remained most successful in this familiar, self-deprecating zone, though she has hinted at something darker and less irony-pilled.

I Used to Be Funny, the feature debut from the Canadian writer-director Ally Pankiw, overambitiously tries to combine Sennott’s proven comedic chops with a trauma plot in the format of a thriller. Sennott plays Sam Cowell, a Toronto-based twentysomething reeling from a mysterious (though entirely predictable) Traumatic Event handled like a lump of coal (“things have been different since, you know …”). The fallout has made her, according to small glances at a Twitter-like timeline, a social media pariah and a recluse. Once a promising standup, Sam is now nearly bedridden, floating through life via the emotional and financial support of her friends, fellow comics Paige (Sabrina Jalees) and Philip (Caleb Hearon, by far the best asset of this movie), and concerned ex-boyfriend Noah (Ennis Esmer).

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