Review of Beverly Hills Cop III (1994) by Jordan K — 12 Jul 2015

To recap - I didn't like the first film much at all, the second improved a little, and the third one's pretty ridiculously corny. It fails at bringing back the likability to its past characters, the few that remain, but it most epicly fails at its goofy as all hell setting of Murphy wandering around a theme park trying to bust yet another rich entrepreneur. The third one's dumb, to put simply.

Axel Foley is back with Det. Billy Rosewood (and without Lt. Taggert, whose presence may have made the film a little more redeemable) to bust an amusement park tycoon and respected cop for counterfeiting and shooting Foley's often angry cursing boss seen in the previous films.

Almost immediately I realized what made the original film popular a decade earlier can't stand the test of time a decade later. In 1994, the signature "Axel F" tune, the feel of how '80s the film remains and how out of touch it really hurts it. The formerly major character Taggert is "retired in Phoenix" and our formerly quirky cop buddy Billy Rosewood is now a big shot boss, a position viewers will most likely find to be out of its original formula. Murphy remains to be decent but the film's premise of him running around a theme park, donning costumes and being blamed day after day for his illegal lookabouts gets really repetitive and goofy. The film's original idea of a rough stuff cop in a swanky city wasn't good to begin with but now the silly cop in a theme park matches into a horrible nightmare. The villain was extremely poorly crafted - another business tycoon, who would've known. Beverly Hills Cop III set an end to it (at least for now) but the franchise didn't end in a bang.