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.