Beverly Hills Cop IV -- Review Thread

To be perfectly honest, I'm not the biggest Beverly Hills Cop guy. The first two are fine and entertaining enough, and that third movie is garbage. So, the prospect of a legacy sequel/fourth film in this franchise never really moved the needle for me, and the final result that is Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F pretty much justifies my ambivalence. Not that I found this movie to be terrible -- I'll give it this, it's a better movie than Beverly Hills Cop III -- but neither is it one that ever really elicits any feeling of passion. I won't accuse it of lack of trying, because much like the recent Bad Boys films, I will say that Axel F takes the same approach of re-establishing its main character within the current times and this phase of his life that does feel honest. It's just that I didn't find the results here as effective. In fact, Axel F is mostly held back by an overall feeling of blandness. The humor and jokes are...mostly fine, I guess. Chuckleworthy most of the time, with a few genuine laughs here and there, but nothing that felt like it truly hit the way as intended. But the blandness seems to mostly come from first-time feature director Mark Molloy, who's clearly just a gun for hire here. Not that the Beverly Hills Cop movies have ever been auteur-driven pieces -- although, Tony Scott brought a lot of style to II -- but, man, at least they had energy when it counted (the first two, at least). Molloy's style is more workmanlike, with no real flair for the action or a tight sense of pacing -- something crucial for a comedy. This movie runs almost two hours, and it feels it a lot. On the plus side, I wouldn't say the actors are phoning it in. Murphy, Joseph Gordon Levitt and the rest of the cast do feel like they're trying, but the material being given to them is average at best. And that's pretty much how I'd describe Axel F as a whole. Not so bad or good that it's memorable; it's just kinda there.