Review of "Beverly Hills Cop III," DVD version

Review of

Beverly Hills Cop III, DVD version


Two out of five stars

 This movie demonstrates how hard it is to do a threepeat in a successful movie series. Eddie Murphy reprises his role as Detroit police detective Axel Foley, only this time he and all those around him fall flat. Even the jokes are lame and never even rise to the level of a chuckle.

 The premise is that a ruthless gang of criminals steal a load of the official paper the government uses to make fifty dollar bills. The gang members kill all of the mechanics in a chop shop where the paper is located right before Axel and his fellow officers arrive. Expecting to deal with some mechanics, they are startled to encounter men with machine guns willing to use them. During the gun battle, Axel’s superior is shot and killed.

 The trail leads Axel back to Beverly Hills and a theme park for children called Wonder World. Judge Reinhold is back as Billy Rosewood, only now he is a high level supervisor with an alphabet soup of jurisdictions. The guns seem to have incredible capacity to hold ammunition and no one, even the ones with machine guns, seem to be able to hit a target. Although their bullets are superb at blasting things to pieces.

 The acting by all the players seems forced and amateurish, there are attempts to compensate using humor and an incredible stunt on a Ferris wheel. To me, the high point of the movie was a cameo appearance by George Lucas, the creator of “Star Wars.” This was a boring movie.