Cop Out

Time for another "you mean you've never seen..." movie: Beverly Hills Cop. It slid through the cracks because I was too young when it was new to see an Eddie Murphy movie. (Remember when he used to make edgy comedies and not fat suit movies and crappy kids movies? Well, I do, and I think this might make me "old.")

Unfortunately, I came to feel after seeing it that I hadn't missed much other than an awesome soundtrack of great 80s tunes. (And that I did not miss back in 1984.) It's a rather weak script; the movie has barely enough plot for a screwball comedy in the vein of Airplane or Police Academy, and not nearly as high a jokes-per-minute quotient.

It's an interesting performance from Eddie Murphy. He's pretty natural all the way through, and yet you can feel a really strong break between moments where he was sticking close to the script and moments when he took off on an improvisation. Back to that "it's a rather weak script" thing.

There are several other good actors in the film in roles of various sizes, but each seems to be playing really close to the type they're best known for. I suppose some credit should go to this film, since they were all doing their schtick first here, but still... Judge Reinhold is the "straight man" for the crazy guy to play off of, Ronny Cox is a typical stick-in-the-mud adversary, Bronson Pinchot is outrageous and goofy with a funny accent, and so on.

A few decent action-shoot-'em-up scenes pepper the film, enough to stave off boredom, but nothing that really can compare with a true action movie that makes blowing stuff up the centerpiece of the film. I don't know, maybe it's just that some many movies in the 25 years since this have copied off the formula. In any case, I only found this to be a D+.