Beverly Hills Cop III - Critical Response

Critical Response

The film was criticized for numerous reasons. For one, fans of the series missed John Ashton (who portrayed John Taggart), Ronny Cox (Andrew Bogomil) and Paul Reiser (Jeffrey Friedman), who did not reprise their roles. Secondly, original producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer were not involved in the production as they were previously. Many critics felt the movie was a generic, formulaic action-comedy film. Critics also felt Eddie Murphy gave a somewhat routine performance as Axel Foley. In an interview in 1994, Eddie Murphy said that Beverly Hills Cop III is "different from the trilogy's first installment because Axel is more mature and no longer the wisecracking rookie cop."

In a 2005 interview, John Landis claimed that Eddie Murphy worked against the comedy of Beverly Hills Cop III. Landis said that the movie "was a very strange experience. The script was not any good, but I figured, 'So what? I will make it funny with Eddie.' I mean, one of the worst scripts I ever read was Beverly Hills Cop. It was a piece of shit, that script. But the movie is very funny because Eddie Murphy and Martin Brest made it funny. And with Bronson Pinchot, that was all improvised. Everything funny in that movie is not in the screenplay, so I thought, 'Well, we will do that.' But then I discovered on the first day when I started giving Eddie some shtick, he said, 'You know, John, Axel Foley is an adult now. He is not a wiseass anymore.' I believe he was very jealous of Denzel Washington and Wesley Snipes doing these . So, with Beverly Hills Cop III, I had this strange experience where he was very professional, but he just was not funny. I would try to put him in funny situations, and he would find a way to step around them. It is an odd movie. There are things in it I like, but it is an odd movie."

In an interview with The A.V. Club in 2009, Bronson Pinchot claimed that Eddie Murphy "was really depressed" at the time Beverly Hills Cop III was being filmed: "Eddie was going through his period at the time of doing movies that were not hits, and he was very low-spirited, low-energy. I said to him, "All anyone ever wants to know when they meet me is what you're like." And he said, "I bet they don't ask that anymore." And then when we did a scene, we were shooting, and he was so low-energy that John Landis sent him upstairs and said, "Just rest, Eddie, and I'll do the scene with Bronson." So whenever you see my face in the movie, I'm not really talking to Eddie, I'm talking to John Landis. And I can understand it, he was just having a bad stretch. I don't know what started the funk, but it lasted a chunk of time, and that was in the belly of the funk, and he was just really sad and low-energy and I basically did the scene without him there."

Eddie Murphy first said he thought "Beverly Hills Cop III was infinitely better than Beverly Hills Cop II." He later claimed during an interview in 2006 on Inside the Actors Studio that he felt the third film was "atrocious" and such a disgrace that "the character was kind of banished for a while ." He said he felt the third film did not reveal enough of the "edginess" of Axel that was present in the first two films. He also said he hopes to return the edgy qualities to the character for the fourth film, and is going to pay more attention to the development of the project and its quality.

Based on the criticism, the film was nominated for two Golden Raspberry Awards, for Landis as Worst Director and the film as Worst Remake or Sequel. Beverly Hills Cop III currently holds a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 31 reviews.