Beverly Hills Cop 3

1994's BEVERLY HILLS COP 3 may not be the career nadir for Eddie Murphy or director John Landis, but a more deflated and disinterested piece of film I can't recall for either of them.  Even as bad sequels go, this one is so cynical and self loathing it's as if it dares itself to even exist.  It's truly an odd bird.  Eddie originally had no interest in a third COP movie, correctly stating that the formula had been milked (far) beyond tolerance.  The second film was popular and liked by many; I found it to be a claustrophobic bore, eventful, but forced, with only a trickle of laughs.  But at least it had some life to it, some energy.  A pulse.

What happened? This film was in development hell for several years.  Script ideas came and went, including a few with Axel Foley in London.  Sounds rather desperate to me, taking the fish out of water idea to an absurd extreme.  Embarrassingly high concept.   It would've just become too cute.  I mean, the original film was great fun but did not bare close scrutiny.  In Hollywood, if a film breaks the bank you make a sequel.  Films are commodities, just like everything else.  COP 3 reeks of a salable good that was destined for the dollar bin on its opening weekend.

Truly a joyless affair, this movie. Stephen E. de Souza's (best known for action vehicles) script takes a bad idea and congeals it into more boredom.  The storyline really centers around a cheesy theme park called Wonder World?  Where the head of security is running a counterfeiting ring?  It all ties back to Detroit, but to explain it would be just as boring as your reading it.  How did it play on paper? Ronny Cox, who played Beverly Hills chief Bogomil in the first film passed on this after getting the script.  I guess the others (especially Murphy of course) did it for the money.  Or the chance to work with Landis.

But the director is merely for hire this time out.  It was his third and far and away least inspiring teaming with his star.  The '90s were not a good time for John Landis, what with duds like OSCAR, THE STUPIDS, and another bad sequel: BLUES BROTHERS 2000.   In COP 3, his direction is perfunctory and stale.  He may pull off a few OK action scenes (although the ferris wheel rescue is far from impressive and the opening chase is rudimentary), but the comic timing he demonstrated in his earliest films is nowhere in evidence.  I'm not even sure this movie ever wanted to be a comedy.

The cast is similarly bored, including the usual parade of director cameos Landis implements.  But none moreso than Murphy, who wanders through the film in a stupor.  I've read reports that his heart wasn't in it, that he more or less completely sabotaged a doomed project by outright refusing to be funny.  His face in the above photo says it all.  Such a waste all around, though Al Green does show up to sing at a funeral.

Let's just pretend this one never happened, k? And maybe that a fourth movie, which has gone through multiple failed start up attempts, does likewise.