Really Surprised!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Absolutely Fantastic

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

At one point in BHC3 when we've all heard the Wonder world song more than enough times (not exactly a song most adults including me were keen on to begin with), Hector Elizondo yells that line that I decided to use as my title. It definitely was a line I was more than ready to yell myself. A tough guy buddy cop film mixed in with a very large percentage of the film at the kiddie theme park with a bunch of people in big furry animal costumes and all that kiddie music was apparently a great idea for some reason to the writers of our beloved Axel Foley's third adventure through the cop/criminal world of L.A. I'm sure they initially wanted to make the theme park in this movie Disney Land but we're afraid of the legalities that would likely to have come out of it. Even the merry go round in the film I'm sure was the one at Disney land. And I read somewhere that the spider ride where Axel saves those kids was a ride at Six flags in California. Anyway, the high amount of high pitched children's songs for a cop movie made this not my favorite BHC film. There was one I happened to find very amusing though, the "I'm a happy train " song during a chase when one of the bad guys kicked the train off the tracks and the happy train voice went "ahhhhh!!".I still enjoyed some of Eddie Murphy's hygincs though and he was slightly toned down here from his overly excitable overly high strung performance in BHC2 in 1987. Axel was at just the right happy medium temperament wise here and in the first BHC though, which was just right. Making a cop in a cop film too mellow is also a mistake, but luckily Murphy never went there in any of three movies. Just like in the first two Cops, Murphy goes out to L. A. to swear revenge on the bad guys that killed someone important to him. It was an old buddy of his in BHC, Beverly Hills police captain Bogomil (Ronny Coz) in BHC2, and Murphy's boss inspector Todd (Gilbert Hill) here. In BHC2 however it was attempted murder on Bogomil and not murder, since he almost died but then survived. In BHC3 Murphy meets up with Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) again, now promoted with a big office. This time we are without Taggert or Bogomil. There's a brief mention of Taggert being retired and endlessly searching for his lost golf balls in Arizona. I believe that he just didn't want to appear in a film that spends so much time in Wonder world with all those animal costumes and that d**n Wonder world song. I don't blame him. Taggert being absent was another reason this film wasn't the best. The bad guys in this movie who, after the initial showdown in Detroit takes place, go back to their California base with Axel tailing after them. Their base is in, wow I would've never guessed, Wonder world. Yayy. Why do some early 1990s films have the bad guys really enthusiastic about late 1950s or 1960s music? "Cop and a half' '(which I did not like) was another example of that with Ray Sharky as late 50s wannabe singer Joey Fountain, trying to sing like Bobby Darin. The bad guys here in BHC3, led by the kniving Ellis Dewald (Tim Carhart) have an underground counterfeit operation at the park. We then get the standard story line of Axel chasing them down, him getting in trouble for wrecking havoc while unsuccessfully trying to convince everyone that the seemingly legit businessmen are really foul. Not too different a situation from the first Beverly Hills cop. As present Beverley Hills captain Hector Elizondo tells Axel, "I've heard Tagger's stories about you". Wonder world is owned by everybody's 'uncle', Uncle Dave (Alan Young) who at one point Dewald shoots ("Oh my God! Someone shot Uncle Dave!?") Guess who's initially blamed. We also get another appearance of Serge (Bronson Pichart) as the flamboyant art store designer from BHC, now selling ultra big state of the art machine guns including the Annihilator 2000, which even contains a small microwave oven. One other scene kind of amusing was when Dewald (who everyone at that time still thought he was a good guy) was giving a speech at an awards presentation, and the way Axel jumps up onto the stage uninvited with his wise cracks. Murphy's always been good making scenes like that amusing, such as in "The nutty professor" where he also has a very funny jumping onto the stage uninvited scene with stand up comedian Dave Chappel.

Basically, if you don't like this movie, you must not have been around to see it when it came out. At the time. This was my favorite of the series.Sure, it can be cheesy, and even bad, but that is part of the fun. It is certainly not a work of cinematic genius, but if you are an action buff, you know what I mean.80s and most 90s action franchises, heck, even current franchises are good as a whole, for what the represent to us. Some are worse than others and that is fine. I will always feel nostalgia towards this movie and I watch it for the enjoyment, not to criticize it. You should too.

Although it was panned on release and much hated by fans of the earlier films, I think BEVERLY HILLS COP III is a pretty decent conclusion to the trilogy. It sees Eddie Murphy on typically energetic form as renegade cop Axel Foley, this time investigating a gang of counterfeiters whose base is beneath a popular theme park.The theme park setting allows for plenty of fun moments, including a high-stakes piece of drama that wouldn't be out of place in a Jackie Chan film like MY LUCKY STARS (Murphy's stuntman is made of strong stuff, that's for sure). The plot is just complex enough to sustain the running time, and another feather in the cap is the presence of director John Landis, who knows a thing or do about shooting an entertaining movie.Landis fills his movie with various cameos which keep the viewer entertained amid all the laughs and action chaos. BEVERLY HILLS COP III is no masterpiece but it's considerably more fun than pretty much all the comedies (Murphy's and otherwise) that followed.

According to John Landis, Murphy was very depressed during filming and his $15 million paycheck certainly didn't cheer him up, as he's pretty catatonic with the occasional smirk and animated laugh he does so well. The script has all the problems of budget cutbacks and pencil stabs from middling executives and producers. The screenplay is written around one lame location, which just speaks volumes on how bereft of ideas and lazy this film is. Once Axel arrives at the theme park, we are introduced to evil security guards, who I hope get a bit more than minimum wage for their commitment to being extra evil - especially when they cause a ferris wheel to go out of control, which becomes a boring story detour for a few minutes to flatly film Murphy's stunt double jumping around the ferris wheel to save some kids. After years of misbehaving on film sets and staring in one bomb after another, Judge Reinhold left Hollywood with his tail between his legs, only to resurface in this stinker. After apologizing for his arrogance to the industry that spit him out, Judge seems like the only cast member excited to be in the film - and awake for that matter. The story plays out like a sitcom and even though there is profanity, this feels like kids stuff. If you catch this edited on network TV, you would mistake it for a family film. The villain is as lame as a generic baddie can get and his motivation even more cartoonish. The congratulatory end, complete with applause, confetti and a freeze frame is the nadir of the franchise.