Beverly Hills Cop is just as good 40 years later

I saw Beverly Hills Cop a number of times in the 1980s. It was probably one of the first profanity-laden films I'd ever seen, to say nothing of one of the first films I'd ever seen where people were regularly being shot. My friends and I also thought it was hilarious, as we'd quote lines to each other all the time. I can't remember if I saw it in the theater for the first time -- I would have only been ten and that would have been too young -- but I feel like I have a memory of an audience going wild when John Ashton's Taggart tells Judge Reinhold's Rosewood "If you do that again, I'll shoot you myself!"

But did I ever see Beverly Hills Cop after the 1980s? I don't know.

It seems a strangely long drought for a movie that was beloved by me, which may still be the best-ever use of Eddie Murphy. (Coming to America is gentler, but this is the version of Murphy that originally became famous and was most like his stand-up concerts, which I also ate up and watched repeatedly.) Maybe in the back of my mind I thought it wouldn't hold up. Maybe in the back of my mind I'd heard Harold Faltermeyer's "Axel F" (one of my favorite songs at the time) one too many times. Maybe Murphy had slid too far into disgrace for me to want to revisit one of his earlier efforts, even though I still see basically every Eddie Murphy movie that gets made.

Well, the release of the new long-delayed Netflix sequel, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, gave me the excuse to revisit the movie, as I'm sure it is doing for many of you.

And I can tell you that it holds up, that "Axel F" plays in almost every scene and that I never got tired of it, and that there may not have been a more charismatic performance ever given on screen than the one Murphy gives here.

I'll probably watch the Netflix movie tonight so I can review it tomorrow.

Let's address each one of these points individually:

1) The movie holds up. How many movies made in 1984 can you say that about? I expected a lot of gay panic and poor representation, but the movie is pretty good on those fronts. Yes, there is a scene where Axel pretends he is gay in order to embarrass a hoity toity maitre d' into allowing him to approach the table of the villainous Victor Maitland to reveal the news he has herpes simplex 10. (One of the first STDs I ever knew about, although I think that may not be a real variation on herpes.) But that scene is more about the embarrassment it would cause to convey private information in a public setting than it is about homophobia. And there may not be a lot of Black characters in this movie other than Axel, but at least there's one other cop on the Beverly Hills force who shares Murphy's skin color. (And Murphy mocks him for not talking black enough, though he then tells the guy he's just giving him a hard time, with a phrase I found charming: "Sorry, I find that funny.")

2) "Axel F" is not obnoxious to listen to. There was a time in the 1980s when everyone I knew had learned how to play the melody of "Axel F" on a piano, and would regularly walk up to unoccupied pianos to play it. Yes this song definitely reached its saturation point at one time, and lately is known to younger people for its version by the internet meme Crazy Frog. But you know what? It's still a great song. It literally plays a dozen to 15 different times in this movie, and never once do you wish they would vary up the music. (Although there are also plenty of other good period songs, like "The Heat is On" and "The Neutron Dance.") And each time the theme kicks in, you think "Yes! Go Axel Foley!"

3) Eddie Murphy is great. Oh my goodness is Murphy great in this. My memory had been that Murphy might have been rude and crude and unpleasant. But he's actually a softie, a charmer. He drops F bombs, but it's primarily when someone else is treating him unjustly, not casually for sport. He's initially nice to everyone he meets, if they deserve that courtesy. He laughs a lot (oh that laugh). He apologizes if he thinks he's delivered a cheap shot to someone. And his moral compass is incredible. I think I thought I was getting the less charming Murphy from some other movies in that era, particularly 48 Hrs., which I saw only recently and didn't much care for. But this is superstar Eddie Murphy that even a mother could love, and he is charismatic as fuck.

Some other observations:

1) I appreciated how much time is spent on reloading guns in the final act, when most of the gunplay occurs. It was probably an excessive amount of gunplay -- and let's not talk about how terrible Maitland's thugs are with machine guns -- but at least they consciously devote time to the need to reload.

2) However, I do think it's funny how there can be a giant police involved shooting with a dozen bodies and instead of that in itself raising the alarm and creating all sorts of terrible headlines for the LAPD, it gets everyone an "Attaboy" clap on the back. Look, it's still a movie and it's still escapism.

3) I saw Paul Reiser in the opening credits, and though Paul Reiser was not a star yet, I was still surprised at how small his scene was. It's like, they put him in long enough to showcase a personality, but then they just excise him from the proceedings.

4) But speaking of small parts for actors who would become big ... Damon Wayans plays the guy who gives Axel the bananas!

5) When Jonathan Banks materialized on Breaking Bad, I thought "That was the guy who was so menacing in Beverly Hills Cop." I'm sure I'd seen him in the intervening years, but not in any part that had made an impression on me like Beverly Hills Cop had. There's something about his face in this movie that always gave me the chills, and I suspect it had to do with him executing Axel's friend at the start of the movie -- something I had probably never before seen in a movie.

I could go on, but like I said, I'm sure you have been watching Beverly Hills Cop again this week yourself.

Let's just hope Axel F does not make us cringe so much that we forget everything we loved from the original. 

A paper shortage at the ticket kiosk

After 1,832 movies watched in the theater (that is a made-up number but somewhat close to accurate), I should have encountered every theatrical mishap by this point.

Sunday night brought a new one.

My wife and I were going to watch A Quiet Place: Day One at the theater closest to our house. This is not the theater I usually go to, because this particular theater does not give me free tickets for my critics card, but when I go with my wife, she is usually not interested in a drive of over twice the distance just to save a few bucks.

Well, we got there and it was a madhouse.

It was the first Sunday of school holidays, but more than that, it was rainy and cold and people wanted to get the hell out of their houses, where they had presumably spent most of a rainy weekend. Would never have guessed it would be so mobbed, though, not with theatrical attendance supposedly on the wane, and with us collectively not giving a shit that it is.

The movie was to start at 6:15, and I got there about 6:05, assuming I'd have plenty of time to buy a ticket and wait for food, what with an expected 15 to 20 minutes of trailers as well. My wife needed to stop at Bunnings (our version of Home Depot) across the parking lot, so she was another ten minutes or so in joining me.

I could already tell the line for food was going to be a clusterfuck, as it had no fewer than 75 people waiting in it. But I couldn't worry about that because the first priority was snaring a ticket, which was no guarantee given the way the lobby was clogged with prospective theatergoers, many of whom were there for other movies, but a sizeable majority of whom were probably there for my movie, given the way they try to stagger start times just to avoid the very madhouse that had materialized before me.

The touch screen of the ticket kiosk I selected was shit. I had to poke it numerous times, in increasing frustration, only for it to catch up about 15 seconds later, having registered all my pushes and therefore leaving me somewhere I didn't want to be. I finally got it to cooperate enough with me to navigate through purchasing my tickets. 

At which point the kiosk disgorged ... nothing.

"What the hell?" I said, looking at the people at neighboring kiosks with pleading eyes, as if they were in any position to help me.

So then I had to go be "that guy" who slows down an already slow concession line by commandeering the attention of one of the guys getting popcorns and sodas. I usually resent people like this, but that's because I assume they are just rudely being indifferent to whether they had a rightful claim to this person's attention, seeing as how they had not yet spent any time in line. Me, I quickly decided there was nothing to do but what I did, because I couldn't wait in a line 75 people deep just to get tickets that should have already been provided to me through an automated system that had failed.

The guy likely knew what the issue was, considering he didn't crinkle up his face in the universal "hmmm" expression people give you when they are confronted by a problem with an unknown solution. He said he would help me and I thought he meant it, but then he started helping the next person with their snacks, almost as though he had forgotten. The second time I reminded him, I guess he understood "Oh you mean right now?"

By this point, two others had also had their money sucked up by the machine -- metaphorically speaking because it was all on card -- with no tickets to show for it. At least, I thought it was only two others.

By the time the man had opened the machine, taken out the roll of spare paper that was stored inside the machine and fed it into the dispensing teeth, the machine started spitting out tickets like a slot machine paying out. None of us knew what seats we'd ordered -- why pay attention to a thing like that when you expect to immediately get your ticket that tells you that very thing? -- but fortunately, he could tell by the combinations of tickets who was who. He gave me a pair of tickets that seemed like they were mine, and then were confirmed as mine by the couple who had used the machine after me confirming that the next pair were theirs.

But what happened to all those people who didn't get their tickets? Did they just assume the payment had not gone through and tried again on a different kiosk? Did they, then, buy at least twice as many tickets to their movie as they intended? And how many days later would this theater still have to be dealing with their complaints, once they checked their bank statement and realized what happened?

I mean, don't you have to have a system that alerts you that the paper is about to run out? Or don't you have to be checking it at regular intervals throughout the day if you don't?

It reminded me of one of my chief complaints about the office building that we used to call home until about two weeks ago, or actually, the cleaning staff employed to work in that building. I can't tell you how many times I would go into the bathroom and find that there was no soap in the dispensers. Like, none in any of the three of them. 

It's the ultimate "You had one job" moment. There should be no "run" on bathroom soap. There should be no day when a significantly larger number of people use the toilet or squirt the soap a significantly greater number of times than usual. If the soap dispenser has gone empty, you've just fallen down on the routine of your job. (And in some cases, really fallen down -- in one of my last days of work there, I had to complain to the concierge in the lobby when the dispensers had gone several days without being refilled. I mean, what kind of work rounds don't involve routine checks of the bathrooms and refilling of their consumable resources?)

I can't call out the theater staff for the same sort of inexcusable neglect. Given the way they were staffed, the way the bins were overflowing with refuse, and the way more than half the people who wanted something to eat before their movie started probably didn't get it, it looks as though they were overrun. So while it wouldn't have been their fault as individuals, perhaps it was the fault of whoever manages the theater and improperly staffed the place for a rainy Sunday evening.

We thought for sure we would be one of those more than half who did not get their food, but my wife embarked on what I thought was a fool's errand -- she ordered the pizza I had planned to order, as well as drinks for us, online from our seats. We'd get a text when they were ready. 

And while this seems like a good system, it also means you have to monitor your phone constantly to be sure you don't miss the text, because you're a good enough theater patron to silence your phone so it doesn't ring out. So my wife also had to be a "that guy" in the film's first 30 minutes, checking her phone in a way that was no outwardly different from a person who couldn't go five minutes without refreshing Insta. (Fortunately, we were off to the side of one of the back rows, so there weren't that many people to scoff at us if they had been inclined to. We did ultimately get the stuff about 30 minutes in and she missed only one crucial plot detail, on which I filled her in in the parking lot.)

Speaking of scoffing, though, the occasion for me to want to scoff at others reared its head a couple times, especially in a Quiet Place film.

This was the first Quiet Place film I'd seen in the theater, having missed the first because it was released while we were in Bali for our tenth anniversary, and I couldn't quite justify using some of that precious week to walk an hour down the beach to the theater. So I'd never experienced what it was like when an entire theater full of people -- and this one was full -- tried not to add their own soundtrack to the extremely quiet one provided by the film.

One family's contribution to ruining that was having brought their young child, possibly even a baby. To be fair, that child was much better behaved than it could have been, but when I heard its gurglings at the very start of the movie, I rolled my eyes so hard I probably should set an appointment with the ophthalmologist. Who takes a young baby to see an apocalyptic movie where aliens tear humans who make noises to shreds? Plus I found myself frequently uncertain whether this soundtrack was internal or external to the movie. It'd mean quite something else if there were a baby gurgling in the background of a New York laid to waste by aliens. 

Thematically speaking, I was a lot more interested in the inadvertent problem creators, such as the guy who had to make cellophane wrinkling sounds for what must have been two straight minutes at one point. I understand you have to open your packaging -- believe me, I've been there. But when I'm in those situations, I always wait for an inevitable moment of loud machinery where I can disguise the disruption I'm creating. We did get the occasional loud noises in this film, of course, but more common were periods of sometimes five to ten minutes where everyone on screen was being as quiet as they possible could be.

In fact, the movie was so generally quiet that you could even hear the leather crying out in agony as people used the buttons set into their armrests to mechanically recline their seats. 

As there was no one to blame for this particular transgression, it was just amusing.