Le Flic de Beverly Hills 3

You would think that anyone who could do the hilarious Amazon Women on the Moon would be a good director. Sorry, Mr Landis, but you blew it on this one.

Maybe it was just one sequel too many, but it fell short of the previous two and is just something to watch if there is absolutely nothing else on TV.

Only Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and Inspector Todd (Gilbert R. Hill) are back with Axel Foley in this one. Billy is great with Axel, but this film just doesn't have the action of the other two.

Theresa Randle provides the eye candy.

How Landis, Lucas, and even Murphy lent themselves to this debacle is beyond me. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if the many implausibilities didn't make it such a departure from the first movie, which I thought was very good.

The one armed rescue from the ferris wheel? Come on! No one has that kind of strength. And how did he escape burning his hand on the rope? How come all the bad guys, who were supposedly from the best security firm in California, couldn't hit the side of a barn with their uzis yet Axel and Co. hit dead center with virtually all of their shots? How did Axel produce counterfeit money with his image on it in like 10 seconds? How come the security guards gave Axel so much hassle when he first tried to enter the park, yet when he enters the corporate center , he is unfettered? The list goes on and on.

Now, I know what you are saying. "It's a movie!" "It's not supposed to be real." But you see, the first episode of the series was quite plausible, and in contrast, made the this third film highly suspect and therefore subject to ridicule.

Suffice it to say, we won't be seeing BHC IV any time soon. Thank God!

**

Starring: Eddie Murphy, Joey Travolta, and Jon Tenney.

When Axel Foley's boss is shot and killed, all the fingers point to a theme park owner. The theme park owner is also the owner of a car theft and counterfeiting ring. It's up to Axel Foley to put a stop to all of this and catch his boss's murderer.

It doesn't have hardly any laughs (though it may slightly entertain you), but I do give it credit for having an interesting plot.

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.

The early 90s were not kind to Eddie Murphy. Paramount butchered Another 48 Hours in the editing room, audiences turned their noses up at Boomerang, and almost nobody even bothered with The Distinguished Gentleman. Eddie had lost his pulling power and decided to go back to the role that made him a superstar. But 1994 just wasn't the right moment as most of the cast and crew were busy, leaving very little in the way of continuity. Several scripts came and went, and what we finally got was a lame 'Die Hard in a Theme Park' story.

There is a huge list of reasons why BHC3 stinks:

No Taggart. No Bogomil. No Jeffrey. No Harold Faltermeyer. No Bruckheimer/Simpson. No opening title. No wisecracking.

Don't get me wrong, I like Hector Elizondo, but he's no substitute for John Ashton (who's absence is explained with a single, flippant line of dialogue). I can't help but think if the above list was shorter then the movie wouldn't have been such a failure. Where on earth did the $70 million budget go? John Landis' action scenes are flat and static, with no real spark or energy.

All three Beverly Hills Cop movies have had horrible scripts, huge plot holes, and hammy villains, so I guess in a way it IS in keeping with the tradition. Eddie Murphy gives a very lazy, disinterested performance as Axel Foley, which reminds me a lot of Seagal's effort in Under Siege 2. Neither of them wanted to be there and were phoning it in long distance. This is NOT the Axel you know and love here.

It's saved from the gutter by Judge Reinhold's gung-ho as usual Rosewood, and the last minute addition of Axel Fox, a nice touch and the most three-dimensional character in the movie.