(1984)
3.5
Matthew Doberman
Following up on the successes of 1982's 48 Hrs. and 1983's Trading Places, Eddie Murphy returned to the screen a year later with Beverly Hills Cop, a rollicking action-comedy that firmly established him as one of the premier stars of the day. Mixing laughs, violence and strip clubs -- a recipe if ever there was one for a guy-movie -- Beverly Hills Cop succeeded to the tune of $316 million worldwide. Though future films would prove him all too fallible, Murphy is unstoppable here as the wise-cracking, fish-out-of-water Detroit cop Axel Foley. Other players add a lot here too, notably Judge Reinhold's dopey tagalong and Bronson Pinchot's cameo as an art gallery host. And talk about hindsight being 20/20: Axel was almost played by Mickey Rourke, then Sylvester Stallone -- both of them only after Clint Eastwood turned down an earlier, more serious conception of the role. It's worth paying attention to Beverly Hills Cop's admirable and strong-selling soundtrack as well -- if "The Heat Is On," "The Neutron Dance" and "Axel F.," the film's synthesizer-heavy theme song, don't bring you back to the mid-eighties, nothing will. The plot is not exactly ground-breaking cinema, and sometimes its violence is a little excessive and conventional. Nevertheless, Beverly Hills Cop is a highly entertaining film that proves there was a darn good reason why Eddie Murphy was once king of the box office.
awards for Beverly Hills Cop on AllMovie
Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
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Nominated |
Best Original Screenplay
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1984 |
Hollywood Foreign Press Association
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Nominated |
Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
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1984 |
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Nominated |
Best Picture - Musical or Comedy
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1984 |
People's Choice Awards
