It's easy to see how this film, the fourth feature in the Beverly Hills Cop series, came about, especially when you look at the entertainment landscape and see the money being made from the good old nostalgia train. There may be another new director behind the camera, Mark Molloy (making his feature debut), and the writing team of Will Beall, Tom Gornican, and Kevin Etten also adds plenty of Beverly Hills newcomers, but what matters most is Eddie Murphy being back in the title role, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Paul Reiser, and Bronson Pinchot making themselves available to reprise their characters, and a soundtrack that tries to recreate every sonic beat from the original.
It's all very basic stuff. Axel Foley (Murphy) ends up returning to Beverly Hills when he is informed about his estranged daughter's life being in danger. His daughter, Jane (Taylour Paige), is a lawyer who is about to defend an alleged cop killer, but she suspects that there are some dirty cops trying to frame an innocent man. Billy Rosewood (Reinhold) is now a PI who also believes that there are some cops involved in this crime, John Taggart (Ashton) is now the Chief, and Captain Cade Grant is a main supporting character played by Kevin Bacon in a way that doesn't make his character completely obvious from his very first scene. Okay, it's obvious. This is the Columbo style of mystery story-telling, with the main satisfaction due to be derived from seeing how Foley catches the person he instinctively knows is the main villain. There's also a helpful detective named Bobby Abbott (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who has just as much interest in keeping Jane safe as they have a shared past as a couple.
Look, it's hard to go into this without knowing what you're letting yourself in for. In that regard, anyone coming away from it feeling short-changed or miserable only really has themselves to blame. That's not to say that this can still leave viewers feeling disappointed, and I was left sadly disappointed, but it basically delivers what it tells you it will deliver. Murphy slips back into his character with relative ease, older, but not necessarily a hell of a lot wiser, and the other series (semi-)regulars turn up to wave and remind you of what you enjoyed about the interactions of everyone the first time around. The structure of the plotting, various lines of dialogue, and the soundtrack choices all work together to ensure that you watch this wrapped up in a cosy glow. It's a shame that there's nothing else accompanying that glow though, and that glow alone just wasn't enough for me.
Murphy has had mixed success in recent years, and it's obvious why he has returned to some past glories (is he currently developing a belated sequel to Trading Places and another 48. Hrs movie? probably not, but I wouldn't be surprised), but he doesn't know how to star in an Eddie Murphy vehicle that also works as well for others around him. Paige is fantastic, and it's good to have someone who actually stands up to the antics of Foley nowadays, even if she has the benefit of being a blood relative, but Gordon-Levitt feels wasted, and sorely out of place, and most of the time watching Reinhold, Ashton, and Reiser is tinged with sadness as viewers are constantly reminded of how age has wearied them. Pinchot is a highlight, as he has been in his previous appearances in this series, and Bacon is very comfortable in a role that he could do in his sleep.
The director and writing team do what they're tasked with doing, but they sadly don't do any more. It doesn't help that everything looks and feels more like a Netflix film than a Beverly Hills Cop movie (a bit tricky to define, but you will know it when you see it . . . something polished that often feels like it has been filmed in front of a whole lot of unnecessary greenscreen). The laughs don't come thick and fast enough, the action is bigger, but not better, and many of the supporting characters feel like popular guest stars on a long-running sit-com. That doesn't make it the worst movie you could choose to watch this weekend, but it does make it the worst of the Beverly Hills Cop movies, despite the fact that it at least has Foley doing some proper detective work again.
4/10
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