It’s incredibly easy to be cynical about legacy sequels after years of watching studios and streamers desperately try to squeeze every last drop of content from whatever IP they could lay their hands on, regardless of whether there’s any more story to be told or anyone interested in it being told. But watching Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, it’s incredibly hard to maintain that cynicism when Harold Faltermeyer’s iconic “Axel F” theme kicks into gear and the man it’s named for, Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy), breaks out his megawatt grin.
Arriving 40 years after the original Beverly Hills Cop, Mark Molloy’s film doesn’t entirely manage to lift itself from the swamp of cheap nostalgia bait and lazy rehashing that so many franchise-extending properties sink into. In Murphy, it features another Hollywood star willing to dust off an old costume in a bid to prove that there can in fact be second acts in American lives, and perhaps even third, fourth, and fifth ones. It’s a film of familiar pleasures, but like Faltermeyer’s still infectiously enjoyable synth-pop theme, they do remain highly pleasurable.
Axel F sees an aging Axel drawn back to Beverly Hills after Detective William “Billy” Rosewood (Judge Reinhold), his old colleague, goes missing. Billy was working on a case involving a suspicious shooting and some possibly crooked cops when he disappeared—a case that just so happens to also involve a lawyer named Jane Saunders, née Jane Foley (Taylour Paige).
Jane truly feels like Axel’s daughter in that she’s 50% exactly like him (stubborn, smart, and great at thinking on her feet), and 50% a rebellion against everything he stands for (her no-bullshit style of doing business is the polar opposite of Axel’s chatterbox shtick, and she’s sought out a career defending criminals rather than slapping cuffs on them). Axel doesn’t love her chosen profession, and there are a couple of lines that reek of copaganda, as in one character complaining that people these days “don’t want swashbucklers, they want social workers,” but the film has the good sense not to make these grumblings a central part of its narrative.
With her steely demeanor, Jane serves as a kind of straight man to Axel, but so does Bobby Abbott (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a young detective who’s working the same case and who makes for a nice enough addition to the collection of incorrigibly honest white boys that Axel seems to accrue wherever he goes. It turns out that Bobby and Jane have a romantic past, though this plotline never goes anywhere or provides anything beyond the opportunity for Axel to make a couple of pretty tired “don’t have sex with my daughter” gags.
Fortunately, most of Axel’s other jokes do work. Murphy remains a comic force to be reckoned with and Axel remains the perfect vehicle for his talents, taking the Fletch approach to crime-solving where there’s no situation so dangerous and no hotel concierge so fastidious that they cannot be bamboozled by a good bit. A prime example arrives early in the film when Axel walks in on a couple of goons turning over Billy’s office, so he immediately starts knocking over stacks of paper as well while yelling at them to hurry the hell up. It’s the kind of conceit that blurs the line between smart and stupid, and Murphy is in his element here.
Watching Axel become mock-offended when a white colleague assumes he wouldn’t be interested in ice hockey is hardly new ground for an Eddie Murphy comedy, but he’s somehow still finding new laughs in it. “My great-grandfather actually played in the Negro Hockey League,” he claims to an increasingly ashen-faced friend, “for the Winnipeg Black Guys.”
Axel’s initial return to Beverly Hills is met with a montage of zany Hollywood stereotypes—woman with fancy little dogs, men with face tattoos and security details, news anchors doing their own makeup in the front seat of their car—which isn’t very original, though it’s pleasantly lacking in venom. Axel smiles warmly at each new oddity he passes, making the scene a loving laugh at one of the planet’s strangest places rather than a drive-by on a bunch of easy targets.
For the most part, Axel F manages to feel like a genuine continuation of the character’s story rather than a slavish retread. Characters like Billy and his partner, Detective Sergeant John Taggart (John Ashton), return to play purposeful parts in the story rather than just “hey, remember this guy?” moments. The chemistry between Ashton and Reinhold still crackles and they slip back into their old roles effortlessly, while also giving us a sense of who these men are now—a little older, a little slower, but still fundamentally the same.
That said, the film does stop in place for a good five minutes so that Serge (Bronson Pinchot), Axel’s old art-dealing friend, can re-do his comedy routine from the first movie. Perhaps it’s funny if you haven’t seen the original in 40 years, though it does also hint toward a fondness for queer male caricatures that the Beverly Hills Cop series still hasn’t outgrown.
The finale also sees Axel F leaning far too heavily on nostalgia. Just like the original, this one concludes with a bloody shootout in a ritzy L.A. mansion. “Jesus Christ, some things never change,” grumbles Taggart, after watching Billy once again lamely wave his badge at a bunch of gangsters even as they’re firing at him. He’s not wrong, and that proves to be both a strength and a weakness for this entertaining, if not especially inspired, sequel.
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