Beverly Hills Cop III (1994)

What a waste of my time!!!

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Fantastic!

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

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.

Although it was panned on release and much hated by fans of the earlier films, I think BEVERLY HILLS COP III is a pretty decent conclusion to the trilogy. It sees Eddie Murphy on typically energetic form as renegade cop Axel Foley, this time investigating a gang of counterfeiters whose base is beneath a popular theme park.The theme park setting allows for plenty of fun moments, including a high-stakes piece of drama that wouldn't be out of place in a Jackie Chan film like MY LUCKY STARS (Murphy's stuntman is made of strong stuff, that's for sure). The plot is just complex enough to sustain the running time, and another feather in the cap is the presence of director John Landis, who knows a thing or do about shooting an entertaining movie.Landis fills his movie with various cameos which keep the viewer entertained amid all the laughs and action chaos. BEVERLY HILLS COP III is no masterpiece but it's considerably more fun than pretty much all the comedies (Murphy's and otherwise) that followed.

Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy), while investigating a car theft ring, comes across something much bigger than that: the same men who shot his boss are running a counterfeit money ring out of a theme park in Los Angeles.This film generally gets a bad rap, being accused of being the worst in the series. Even director John Landis has distanced himself, saying that Murphy was going through a rough time in his life and was not giving it everything he had. These may be fair comments, but the film is still better than given credit for.Maybe not as funny as the first two, and maybe Murphy is more toned down, but there is still plenty of fun here from Bronson Pichot and others... not to mention an overall decent script. Even just trying to identify the director cameos is a fun game.

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