Beverly Hills Cop III (1994)

Expected more

Crappy film

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Basically, if you don't like this movie, you must not have been around to see it when it came out. At the time. This was my favorite of the series.Sure, it can be cheesy, and even bad, but that is part of the fun. It is certainly not a work of cinematic genius, but if you are an action buff, you know what I mean.80s and most 90s action franchises, heck, even current franchises are good as a whole, for what the represent to us. Some are worse than others and that is fine. I will always feel nostalgia towards this movie and I watch it for the enjoyment, not to criticize it. You should too.

Is Beverly Hills Cop III better than part 1 or 2? No. Does that make it a bad film. Of course not. There are some good qualities to this film that makes it enjoyable. First the villain was much better than part 2. Using an amusement park as the base location of Axel Foley's investigation gave it a unique feel instead of running all over Beverly Hills again. That we have seen 2 times. Eddie Murphy was his usual Axel Foley self while Judge Reinhold returns as the goofy Billy Rosewood. The biggest problem was audiences were not ready for another Beverly Hills Cop movie and to live up to the previous two was impossible with not having the full cast from the previous films. Overall I have watched this numerous times. Plenty of action and laughs make this an entertaining film.

Axle Foley (Eddie Murphy) is in charge of a car theft ring take down but doesn't call in SWAT. They confront some heavily armed killers who just massacred the crew. His beloved boss Inspector Todd (Gilbert R. Hill) is killed. Secret service agent Steve Fulbright (Stephen McHattie) stops him from catching the bad guy. Some evidences point to Wonder World in LA owned by Uncle Dave Thornton (Alan Young). Axel goes out to California to reunite with Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) who has a new partner in Jon Flint (Héctor Elizondo). Axel gets into a shootout at Wonder World and even rescues a couple of kids. Ellis De Wald (Timothy Carhart) is the head of park security who Axle immediately recognizes as the man who killed Todd. Flint is a fan of De Wald and doesn't believe Axel. Uncle Dave tells Axel about some suspicious things and Janice (Theresa Randle) tries to help him.The story is pretty stupid and the amusement park setting is really silly. I guess it's suppose to be subversive somehow. Instead, it just diminishes the movie's edginess and realism. It makes everything look cheesy especially with George Lucas making a cameo. Bronson Pinchot's Serge makes one of the strangest career change ever and it adds even more to the cheese factor. Eddie Murphy is still the same charismatic guy and it's nice to have Judge Reinhold back. However this one misses John Ashton and Ronny Cox. It also misses some sense of realistic action.

By critics' reviews, Part III may have been the worst off of the three Beverly Hills Cop movies by far; however, I thought it was still fun to watch and great entertainment. Part III deals with Detroit Cop Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) stumbling upon a counterfeit ring, operating from a Beverly Hills theme park by a corrupt community leader Ellis De Wald (Timothy Carhart). Foley witnessed the same man that gunned down his boss when he was investigating a car theft ring in Detroit earlier. As a result, it's back to Beverly Hills for Axel and another mission of exact revenge and clashing with the Beverly Hills Police Department.Although comedies, the first two films had a sensitive and no-nonsense touch to it, dealing with high-profiled police cases. This film, by contrast, has a more light-hearted touch as a large part of the movie is set in a Disneyland-style theme park called Wonderland. I didn't mind this, actually. The movie was still action-packed and Murphy still had his humorous and witty-style while portraying Foley. De Wald, the main villain, is probably the most ruthless of all the bad guys in the three movies - very devious and trigger-happy.Theresa Randle was great as park employee Janice, and she had good on-screen chemistry with Murphy. And, Judge Reinhold returned and gave another memorable performance as the calm and cool Billy Rosewood. I didn't care for the Jon Flint character very much (Hector Elizondo); I thought he served no real purpose in the movie other than trying to intervene with Foley's unsuspecting police moves. I would have preferred the the filmmakers putting Sgt. Taggert's character (John Ashton) back in the movie rather than retiring him off.Rounding up the cast was a bunch of nice cameos by screenwriters, composers and directors, including George Lucus and Richard and Robert Sherman, and a co-star role by Alan Young as Walt Disney-like character Uncle Dave. He gave a memorable and touching role and I wished the filmmakers could have made Young appear in more scenes.Overall, not the best of the Beverly Hills movies, but not a distant third either.Grade B