well, a bit of a rarity for me these days as chance allowed me to watch something on that Netflix thing. indeed i do pay for it, look you see, but as they have "locked down" stuff i leave the account for them at the house to watch whilst i rely on videos (discs) for the most part in my place of exile. so, for reasons i shall not disclose, time at the house meant that i got to watch Beverly Hills Cop 4, or as it appears to be called Beverly Hills Cop Axel Foley.
again i am loathe to call anything of this nature what i write a "review" as such. presumably all that wish to see the film, or avoid it, will have comfortably done so without my input. but, for those in a rush and wishing to avoid "spoilers", it's enjoyable as far as being the ultimate personification of what they call "fan service", but overall deeply flawed and shockingly poorly made.
by "fan service" i mean we are well and truly, somewhat unexpectedly, in Lethal Weapon 4 territory here. there's a vague, marginal plot, but overall the film is effectively a quasi reunion home video shot on the fly. happily, or luckily, all of the lead actors remain true to their characters as they are so fondly remembered (The Last Jedi this is not, perhaps there is a god) and so little of that matters.
to pick up on the flaws is to nitpick, but here we are. firstly, the "plot", basically about police corruption. we, the audience, are expected to accept that Rosewood and Taggart would fall out over whether one high ranking copper (Kevin Bacon) is corrupt or not to the extent that Rosewood quits the force. if this is unlikely in the "Beverly Hills Cop universe" then it is all the more unlikely that Taggart would have not spotted the copper in question very much is corrupt, be it the expensive shoes or the fancy rolex watch giving the game away early doors.
one early source of amusement is also a bit of a flaw. i am reluctant to say "plot hole" as that generally implies a plot exists to feature holes. most, if not all, of the opening credits are of Axel Foley driving around Detroit, being told to "f*** off" or "f*** you" by most of the city. yes, amusing, and a lovely self-depreciating touch by the affable Eddie Murphy, but it does somewhat undermine that his legend is that he's one of the best undercover cops the world has ever seen.
for poorly made, well, i am not sure if it was all lazy or sloppy or everyone involved went "it doesn't matter, people will be thrilled to see the beloved characters and too busy laughing". in one of the earlier chase scenes, and there are many, a stunt double (or stunt actor) falls into a fountain. presumably they were supposed to look like they had been knocked in, or taken into it with momentum. nope, they just fall into it for no apparent reason.
sadly this sloppiness (or what have you) quite ruins the return of Serge. it wasn't so long ago i rewatched the original, and my word has it held up well. of the many moments of genius in that film there was the perfection of comic timing. when, in the original, Axel said "get the f*** out of here" the split second Serge response of "no i cannot do that" was comedy gold. an attempt is made to recreate that, but there's too much of a gap between the two talking for it to work. rather deflating.
it was somewhat disappointing to have, at long last, Kevin Bacon back in a major film title only to see his talents wasted. whereas in the original Steven Berkoff absolutely rose to the extremely well constructed part of the villain, Victor, here Kevin Bacon is expected to just stand around and be Kevin Bacon whilst everyone else gets on with whatever.
but still i enjoyed it. Eddie Murphy, the now sadly late John Ashton and Judge Reinhold played their parts once more to perfection. so what at, if times, it was like watching some videos of them messing around? that's where a lot of the love for the original (and second one) came from. i would rather this existed than it did not, and would take the film all day every day over some dreadful remake. but no, rather unlikely i would watch it again.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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