Judge Reinhold is in a truck barreling down the highway chased by angry cops when he turns to Eddie Murphy at the wheel and says something we’re all feeling, “God, I missed you, Axel.” We all really did, but we get the sarcastic and sweet Axel Foley once again in Netflix’s “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F,” exactly 30 years since “1994’s Beverly Hills Cop III.” Is the new movie any good? Who cares? The fourth outing brings back not just Murphy and Reinhold to the Axel Foley Cinematic Universe, but also long-time co-stars Paul Reiser, John Ashton and Bronson Pinchot.
Kevin Bacon, Taylour Paige and Joseph Gordon-Levitt make their debuts. The plot is pretty simple: Murphy’s Foley is living his best cop life in Detroit — destroying things spectacularly — when he’s asked to urgently return to Beverly Hills to help his estranged daughter, played with real grit by Taylour Paige. He then gets caught up in a murder case that has dirty cops and lets him make fun of snooty Beverly Hills.
Newcomers may be puzzled by the slow pace and ’80s feel of Mark Molloy’s directed sequel. It’s not as funny as previous ones or ambitious in the way sequels for beloved franchises have gotten. But it has Murphy blowing stuff up and joking about it — all we need, really.
“Goddamn, Foley. Here we go again,” says Ashton, playing the exasperated chief of police, and that sentiment runs through the fourth entry. All you need to make your Gen X friends happy is a montage of Mur.