Beverly Hills Cop (1984) June 24th, 2024

I recently decided to prioritize watching the long list of 80s comedies I’ve yet to see. But after disappointing showings by Under the Rainbow and Zelig I began to wonder… Are 80s comedies funny? You’ve answered ‘Yes!’, please allow me to explain. If you’re listing Back to the Future, The Goonies, and The Princess Bride then you’ve fallen victim to one of the classic blunders! Never cite perfect films when a ‘best-comedies-of-the-decade’ conversation is on the line! I didn’t want to give up so I threw a dart at the shortlist and landed on the 1984 Eddie Murphy classic, Beverly Hills Cop!

Did everyone neglect to tell me Beverly Hills Cop isn’t a comedy? I expected outdated racially-charged humor but instead I got a laughless streetwise-cop flick! See if you can find the comedy here: Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) is a struggling undercover cop who’s on his boss’ last nerve. Axel’s broke, stuck in a dangerous dead-end job and worse of all… he lives in Detroit! Zing! Don’t worry things are going to get worse when Axel returns home to find an intruder rummaging through his belongings. Axel pulls a gun on the man but don’t worry, it’s just his best friend from his criminal past paying an unexpected B&E visit! If we’re not careful this kind of misunderstanding could become comical! The reunited friends catch up at a local bar where Axel learns his friend is still involved in high stakes criminal activity, like illegally trafficking German bearer bonds! After returning to Axel’s apartment they’re confronted by two men who beat them up, ask about the bearer bonds, and murder Axel’s friend in the hallway.

Where’re the jokes? Shouldn’t I be delerious with laughter? Why is this a serious action film?

A distraught Axel follows the leads to LA where he joins forces with a few uptight Beverly Hills cops to crack the case. They crack the case and have a classic 80s action shootout with the bad guys in an LA mansion and Axel manages to influence the other principal officers to take liberties with their law enforcement styles (AKA violating the law and citizens’ civil rights?). That’s the Beverly Hills Cop arc. It’s a very straight forward, above average police procedural action film where the main character successfully corrupts a police station.

There’s not even a twist or big reveal at the end, they all just… win? I kept waiting for something funny or clever to happen but it never did. There were enough moments where the Beverly Hills Lieutenant controls his unit with such meticulous attention to detail and procedure that I began to believe he was working with the bad guys all along. I expected him to reveal his true allegiances and betray Axel in the final shootout to protect himself. Axel would defeat the corrupt Lieutenant but this twist would justify all the deliberate mentions of his scrupulous adherence to the rules as a means to personally cover his tracks.

Nope. Lieutenant Bogomil white-knights the climactic bust and delivers the killing shot to the big bad guy… but unfortunately not to cover his own illicit misdeeds. No, he’s just the biggest hero of them all. In the end Axel wins the day when Bogomil learns to lie by falsifying a statement to the Police Chief. Yay for justice?

Beverly Hills Cop is a surreal oddity sitting firmly on the fence between gritty and funny. But even if it was strongly one or the other, what was the moral? What were the themes? It’s cool to be bad, even if you’re a cop?