Review of Beverly Hills Cop III (1994) by Cassandra M — 28 Jan 2008

Eddie Murphy's third outing as Detroit police detective Axel Foley who seems to have made more of a crime fighting contribution to Beverly Hills still generates some power in the series but the first two films are naturally the better ones.

The film inexplicably removes the John Taggart (John Ashton) and Andrew Bogomil (Ronny Cox) characters from the series and adds a shallow new character named John Flint (Hector Elizondo). Fortunately, Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) is still around and he still manages to be a perfect foil for Foley.

Foley's third case in Beverly Hills is a little improbable but the action scenes help to make up for the plot which has to do with Foley matching wits with a corrupt head of security (Timothy Carhart) at a popular Beverly Hills amusement park called WonderWorld (a creation of Paramount Parks).

The park character costumes and designs are nice and colorful and Theresa Randle helps to pick things up as a potential love interest for Foley but the film doesn't give Murphy very many funny lines and that is a disappointment if one wants to label this film as a comedy.

The action is as usual great but Murphy is reknowned as a comedy star and the lack of laughs here prevent this from being a perfect series. Still, it's a very good series.