MY MOVIE SHELF: Beverly Hills Cop II

This is the deal: I own around 350 movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Through June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #30: Beverly Hills Cop II

They talk about horror sequels in Scream 2. The body count is higher, the budget is bigger, the deaths are more elaborate. Action comedy sequels aren’t much different. Beverly Hills Cop II is slicker than its predecessor. It’s bigger and more stylized. It features more famous faces. It’s the same structure as the original (really, almost exactly the same), but turned up to 11. And as far as sequels go, it’s pretty successful in capitalizing on that tried and true formula, providing a solid-enough story and plenty of comedy. It’s a good one (unlike III, which — let’s forget that ever happened).

So, aside from the opening theft scene, the movie starts with Axel (Eddie Murphy) undercover as “a businessman” in Detroit (just like the first). Inspector Todd chews him out (just like the first). A friend is shot. Axel sneaks off to Beverly Hills. We’re treated to a scene of Axel driving down the streets of the super-rich city, observing all the strange and hilarious behaviors of the people who live there. Literally, all of this also happens in the first film. But everything is also amped up.

Here, instead of scamming a hotel room, he outsmarts an entire construction crew and scams himself a mansion. Instead of one hilarious strip club scene, we get a hilarious strip club scene AND a Playboy mansion scene. Instead of making an offhand joke to a valet with his piece of shit Nova, he trades jokes with Chris Rock as the Playboy mansion valet who has to park Axel’s cement truck. Instead of sneaking past one receptionist with a slapdash floral delivery excuse, we get two elaborate cons on front desk ladies who handle all deliveries/visitors. Instead of one big shootout at the end, we get two mad dashes to crimes in progress, one wild car chase involving several crashed police cruisers and a giant cement truck, and still the big shootout at the end. And instead of Axel doing pretty standard (if slick and imaginative) police work like he did in Beverly Hills Cop, Beverly Hills Cop II sees him almost as his fabled “Supercop,” cracking codes before computers, breaking into buildings while circumventing alarm tape (he was also once a supercriminal — B&Es, running numbers, etc.), being able to recognize specialized bullet casings in a single glance (far outpacing literally everyone in the Beverly Hills police department), and magically lifting fingerprints with superglue and blacklights. It’s insane how gifted this movie makes him out to be.

Of course, there are also a lot of things that don’t make any sense. Why is this crime ring referred to as the Alphabet Bandits when the only theft they committed was at the letter A place? Their B crime was popping Bogomil (Ronny Cox), but by then they were well-known by this nickname. Speaking of being well-known, why the hell is some news station in Detroit covering the shooting of a Beverly Hills police lieutenant? I mean, really. Even if it was a national news broadcast, there’s no way that makes the cut unless the “Alphabet Bandits” have been on a crime spree that’s at least made it to J. Also, how has Bogomil practically solved the mystery of the Alphabet Bandits by the time he’s gunned down (and how did they know he solved it)? Did he know they were up to something before they started robbing places? Because like I said, they only robbed the one place, and all anybody seemed to know about that one was that a 6-foot blonde (Brigitte Nielsen) was involved. As Taggart (John Ashton) says, “Six-foot blondes grow on trees in California.”

There’s also the matter of how in the world Gilbert Gottfried’s character Sydney Bernstein would think a police detective could get on Bernstein’s office computer and wipe out evidence of a bunch of parking tickets from the police department system. This is a good five years before the internet was even on college campuses. Or how that one evidentiary gun casing would lead to literally all the relevant criminals (maybe that’s how Bogomil had solved it already), including the patsy Charles Cain (Dean Stockwell, who will always be Al Calavicci in my heart). Or that Bogomil’s daughter would just so happen to work in an insurance company which just so happens to be the head criminal’s insurance company, in which there is a clear paper trail of his motive.

There are a lot of awfully convenient coincidences, is what I’m saying.

But these coincidences take nothing away from how funny it is. Taggart falling in the pool, then dressing in golf pants, then being taken for Gerald Ford. “Ooh, I love it when you talk dirty.” Paul Reiser really getting to stretch his legs in this one as annoying tag-along Jeffrey (who still does a mean Inspector Todd impression). Twins Monique and Unique. “Follow your dicks.” Rosewood (Judge Reinhold), formerly a machine-gun hater, now a gun-happy nutjob. (Remember when gun freaks were considered nutjobs? Good times.) “You know where your dick is, don’t you Big Al?” Axel standing on his tiptoes to talk to Karla (Nielsen). And Gilbert Gottfried picking up his phone off the cradle and screaming “Bitch!” into it, like there was anything other than a dial tone on the other end.

The movie makes me laugh. And, not for nothing, but I always kind of liked how Axel never keeps any of the money he gains from various sources. The $20 for Monique and Unique goes back to Rosewood so he can buy some more vitamins. The $50 he finds at the abandoned armored truck goes to Chris Rock to park the cement truck next to a limo. And the $200 he gets as a bribe from Bernstein goes to Food for the Homeless for Beverly Hills in Bernstein’s own name. Now that’s slick.

 

MY MOVIE SHELF: Beverly Hills Cop

This is the deal: I own around 350 movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Through June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #29: Beverly Hills Cop

Whenever I think about Beverly Hills Cop, I think of the second one. I’ve always thought I liked it more, but really I think it’s just that I probably saw that one first. It came out in ’87, when I was 12, whereas this one came out in ’84, when I was 9. So it follows that I likely didn’t see the first one until after I saw the second. (On that note, what kind of parents let a kid see the second movie in a series before the first? That’s got to be some kind of child abuse, right?)

The first thing I noticed on this viewing was that it was made in association with Eddie Murphy Productions. That’s pretty striking. Nowadays, actor-owned production companies are a dime a dozen, but back then I think it was still incredibly rare. Probably especially so for black actors. I realize Murphy had been in the huge hits Trading Places and 48 Hrs. by this time, not to mention being one of the breakout stars of Saturday Night Live, but I still feel like having his own production company was a pretty big deal — one that I never hear about, despite it being active in the business throughout those final fifteen or so years of the twentieth century.

This movie is really Murphy at the top of his game. I’ve grown a more objective eye over the years and can tell this is really the stronger of the two good Beverly Hills Cop movies (never acknowledge that there was a third — it never happened). He’s honed his acting skills enough that he sells his role well, but still is given enough room to spread his wings and do some of his easy comedy and character work. It’s not gimmicky at this point; it’s still fresh and funny and new, not overdone.

There’s more police work in this one, too. He’s new in Beverly Hills and the cops here don’t know him, so he has to prove himself trustworthy. Even Jenny, his friend from childhood who knows him well, is skeptical of his suspicions, so he has to work angles and find clues. The audience already knows he’s right, because we were witness to the murder of his friend by Maitland’s lackey (an almost unrecognizable Jonathan Banks, because he is so young here), but the other characters don’t and it’s nice to see Murphy as Axel Foley really work for it here.

The comedy in this one is better too — better balanced with the action, and stronger on its own. There are so many iconic moments here: getting thrown out of the window, claiming to have Herpes Simplex 10 at the Harrow Club, the entire scene at the strip club (chair dancing, claiming club soda will make him throw up, noticing the guys casing the joint, everything “Phillip,” and the wide grin with the “Okay” hand gesture after he disarms the guy), THE BANANA IN THE TAIL PIPE, and everything Serge. And there are small things to enjoy, too, like Damon Wayans as the gay hotel buffet steward who sneaks Foley some bananas, Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) being like a wide-eyed kid detective who hates machine guns, Taggart (John Ashton) bringing real tension to his early scenes with Foley, Bogomil (Ronny Cox) lying his ass off to the chief about the massive shootout at Maitland’s, and the completely underappreciated Gilbert R. Hill as Inspector Todd, who is strong, loud, authoritative, hilarious, and takes none of Foley’s shit.

It’s a great movie, and it holds up really well over time. I’ve watched it a bunch of times over the years, and it never gets old. Neither of them do.

Actually, as I sit and think about it, Beverly Hills Cop II is almost a carbon copy of the original. But we’ll get to that later tonight.