There’s a moment a little less than halfway through Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, a franchise arising this Fourth of July weekend after a 30-year absence like a noisy brood of cicadas, when Eddie Murphy’s titular Detroit cop, Axel Foley, has to check into a fancy hotel. As has been the style of the films since the first one exploded two generations ago, Murphy affects an accent and begins a bit, pretending to be a hoity-toity writer from Bon Appetit. But this time, before the routine can get off the ground, he pulls the plug with a shrug. “No . . . to hell with this,” he says in his own voice. “I’m just too tired.”

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I feel you Eddie/Axel. We all do.

TKTKTK ★1/2 (1.5/4 stars)
Directed by: Mark Molloy
Written by: Will Beall, Tom Gormican, Kevin Etten
Starring: Eddie Murphy, Taylour Paige, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Kevin Bacon, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Paul Reiser, Bronson Pinchot
Running time: 115 mins.

Exhaustion of every sort pervades Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. You see it in its dearth of ideas, as the........

© Observer