We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
Old school comedy, some action, and nature run amok.
BEVERLY HILLS COP (1984)
If I'm going to watch an Eddie Murphy movie, chances are that it's going to be Beverly Hills Cop. It's his best film as far as I'm concerned; it takes the actor/comedian at the peak of his funniness, and drops him into an awesome action movie with a terrific soundtrack. Within the first 10 minutes you've heard two great songs ("The Heat Is On" by Glenn Frey" and "Neutron Dance" by The Pointer Sisters), had the chance to laugh at some of Murphy's antics as Detroit police officer Axel Foley, and witnessed an action sequence with police cars chasing a semi truck through the streets of Detroit while Axel hangs off the back of the trailer. It's the perfect way to set up the fun that the rest of the movie is going to be, because there's a lot more laughs and action to come. The needle drop songs come less frequently after this, but there are still some memorable songs from the likes of Patti LaBelle and Vanity 6, plus when there aren't songs playing you get to hear the iconic score composed by Harold Faltermeyer.
The script by Daniel Petrie Jr. and Danilo Bach doesn't sound like much in basic description: Detroit cop Axel Foley has a unique, reckless approach to his job, for which he regularly gets chewed out by his stereotypically hot-tempered boss Inspector Todd (Gilbert R. Hill). Axel was a criminal himself in his younger days, and he gets a visit from his buddy Mikey Tandino (James Russo) soon after Mikey is released from prison - but not until after Mikey has spent some time out in Beverly Hills, getting mixed up in the criminal dealings of drug smuggling art gallery owner Victor Maitland (Steven Berkoff) and stealing some German bearer bonds from him. Unfortunately, Maitland's goons Zack (Jonathan Banks) and Casey (Michael Champion) are able to track Mikey down to Detroit and murder him right outside Axel's apartment. Inspector Todd orders Axel not to get involved with the murder investigation, so of course Axel takes a vacation to Beverly Hills, where he handles the investigation on his own time, seeking to avenge his friend.
That's the sort of action plot that could have starred anyone, and in fact Sylvester Stallone was signed on to star in Beverly Hills Cop before the job went to Murphy. The film certainly would have been very different if Stallone had been the lead; it has been said that Stallone took ideas he had for Beverly Hills Cop and worked them into Cobra, a much darker movie. So action fans really lucked out when Stallone departed Beverly Hills Cop, because we got two classic action movies out of the deal: Stallone's Cobra and Murphy's Beverly Hills Cop.
Any action star would have been capable of carrying the story, but Murphy gives such an incredible, endearing, amusing performance as Axel Foley that it's impossible to imagine anyone else starring in Beverly Hills Cop. It wouldn't be the movie that it is, at all, without him. While Axel is very serious about his mission of revenge, he's completely irreverent about every other aspect of his life. He talks his way into staying in an expensive hotel, toys with the actual Beverly Hills cops who get assigned to keep an eye on him, does things like pretend to be a customs agent to search Maitland's warehouse, thwarts an armed robbery by acting drunk, and is openly antagonistic toward Maitland in public situations. No other actor would have handled these scenes the way Murphy does.
Axel isn't totally alone in Beverly Hills. Jenny Summers (Lisa Eilbacher), a longtime friend of his and Mikey's, lives there and works for Maitland, so he's able to get some help from her. As the film goes on, he also manages to get some hesitant assistances from local cops John Taggart (John Ashton) and Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold), and gains the respect of Lieutenant Andrew Bogomil (Ronny Cox). Murphy has great chemistry with his co-stars, and also has memorable interactions with Bronson Pinchot as art gallery employee Serge and Paul Reiser as fellow Detroit officer Jeffrey. Plus Damon Wayans has a cameo as a character credited as "Banana Man".
Beverly Hills Cop is one of the best action comedies ever made, one that many other films have tried to follow in the footsteps of over the decades. A lot of fun movies have come out of the attempt to replicate the success of Beverly Hills Cop, including a couple Beverly Hills Cop sequels. Some fans even enjoy Beverly Hills Cop II more than the first, but that one doesn't work as well for me because director Tony Scott wasn't as good at handling the comedy as director Martin Brest was on this one. All this time later, the action and the comedy in Beverly Hills Cop both hold up to make for a very entertaining viewing experience.
THE BOB NEWHART SHOW (1972 - 1978)
The classic 1970s sitcom The Bob Newhart Show is an incredibly pleasant show to watch, one of those "comfort food" shows that helps me relax on a hectic day and takes me right back to my childhood. Even though the entirety of the show's six reason run had played out well before I was born, the reruns were on regularly when I was a little kid, so when my age was in the single digits I was already quite familiar with Chicago psychologist Bob Hartley (Bob Newhart), his wonderful wife Emily (Suzanne Pleshette), his wisecracking receptionist Carol Kester (Marcia Wallace), his girl-crazy orthodontist pal Jerry Robinson (Peter Bonerz - yes, that's his real name), and his really dumb, good-hearted by frequently infuriating neighbor Howard Borden (Bill Daily). Maybe a lot of what they were talking about went over my head, but I still enjoyed spending time watching them.
Catching up with The Bob Newhart Show again now that I'm in my late thirties, I appreciated the show much more than I did as a child. It's a really amusing show with terrific performances from the lead characters. A good portion of most episodes take place at Bob's office, where he treats recurring patients like the very unpleasant Elliot Carlin (Jack Riley), knitting enthusiast Mrs. Bakerman (Florida Friebus), and troubled young woman Michelle (Renee Lippin), as well as some one-off patients. One patient we see on a few occasions is Craig Plager, played by Howard Hesseman - and Plager is at the center of a very impressive season 5 episode in which he comes out as gay. Yes, there are some jokes at the expense of Plager's sexuality, but the way Bob steps up and comes to the defense of Plager and of gay people in general in this episode was really great to see, and it's surprising that the subject was handled this well in 1976.
Watching Bob interact with the people around him is a delight, and the writing was top-notch. It has been said that Bob Newhart was the sort of performer who can make you laugh without saying a word, and that was absolutely my experience watching The Bob Newhart Show. I couldn't tell you how many times Bob made me crack up just with a look on his face. Of course, he's also an expert at dropping hilarious, deadpan lines.
Now that I have sat through all 142 episodes of The Bob Newhart Show, it's no longer just a show I remember watching when I was a little kid. Now I can say that it truly is one of my favorite sitcoms.
POLICE ACADEMY 3: BACK IN TRAINING (1986)
Revisiting Police Academy 3 roughly thirty years after the last time I watched it, it quickly became clear that this was, somehow, the one I saw the least of the Police Academy films that were released in the '80s. I watched those first six movies over and over throughout the '80s and early '90s, thanks to cable airings and VHS recordings. I said that a scene in Police Academy 2 provided one of the most memorable viewing experiences of my childhood, and I have memories of each of the others that are clear enough that I could tell you which sequel they were in. But I didn't have any memories specific to Police Academy 3, and as I watched the movie again I remembered very little of it, just a stray moment here and there.
I didn't even think Mauser (Art Medrano), the antagonistic Lieutenant was in any other Police Academy movies after part 2, but here he was being the antagonist again, this time as a Commandant who runs one of the two police academies in the state these movies take place in. As we've seen in the previous movies, the other police academy is run by Commandant Lassard (George Gaynes). Now it has been announced that one of the two academies will be closing, the higher-ups just haven't decided which one yet. So now Mauser and Lassard are in direct competition with each other, and Mauser is quite intense about wanting to make sure Lassard is the loser. Mauser has support from his part 2 lackey Lieutenant Proctor (Lance Kinsey) and part 1 characters Sergeants Copeland (Scott Thomson) and Blanks (Brant von Hoffman), which isn't that necessary because cadets at Lassard's police academy often manage to look ridiculous on their own.
In an effort to make his academy look good, Lassard calls in our heroes from the previous two movies. Cadets in the first movie and taking their first assignments in the second, Carey Mahoney (Steve Guttenberg), Moses Hightower (Bubba Smith), Eugene Tackleberry (David Graf), Larvell Jones (Michael Winslow), Laverne Hooks (Marion Ramsey), and Douglas Fackler (Bruce Mahler) are now all Sergeants, and - along with the first film's Lieutenant Debbie Callahan (Leslie Easterbrook) - ready to teach. Lassard asks them all to be instructors, setting the film up to be little more than a series of vignettes showing wacky things happening during the training of a new class of cadets.
I can understand why I didn't remember much about Police Academy 3: there's not much to remember about it. It's mildly amusing, but there's nothing to really stand out about it. Returning part 2 director Jerry Paris and writer Gene Quintano did make the wise decision to have most of the new cadets be characters we met in the preceding movies. They include Fackler's wife (Debralee Scott), Tackleberry's brother-in-law (Andrew Paris), Sweetchuck (Tim Kazurinsky), who was always having run-ins with the gang in part 2... and former gang leader Zed (Bobcat Goldthwait), who is turning his life around. Also in the mix is Shawn Weatherly as Karen Adams, simply because they insist on giving Mahoney love interests. Which is so unnecessary, his love interest in part 2 was almost completely removed from the movie. The standout new addition is Brian Tochi as Cadet Nogata, a Japanese exchange student who strikes up a romance with Callahan. Apparently Paris did the same with Easterbrook during production.
Police Academy 3 is fine, if you liked the other movies you'll probably get some enjoyment out of this one, but it just feels like the franchise was running out of steam at this point, just going through the motions. But there was still a lot more Police Academy to go, so obviously it wasn't sputtering out as much as this movie makes it feel like.
By the time Police Academy 3 reached theatres, Warner Bros. had already been planning to have Paris direct Police Academy 4. Sadly, that wasn't to be. Paris was hospitalized three days before Police Academy 3's release date, and while he was in the hospital it was discovered that he had a brain tumor. Two surgeries couldn't save his life - Paris passed away just thirteen days after the tumor was discovered, and ten days after his final movie was released.
ENDANGERED SPECIES (2021)
One year after giving the world Rogue, a film in which Megan Fox ran into trouble with dangerous humans and ravenous lions while in Africa, writer/director MJ Bassett and her daughter/co-writer Isabel Bassett return to Africa for Endangered Species, a film in which a family runs into trouble with dangerous humans and ravenous animals while in Africa. This seems to be a concept the Bassetts enjoy dealing with, so let's see if they decide to make this an "Africa Screams" (to borrow a title from Abbott and Costello) trilogy. And in the meantime, let's dig into just how unfortunately underwhelming Endangered Species is.
It sounds like the set-up for a good time: an American family headed up by Rebecca Romijn and Philip Winchester as Lauren and Jack Halsey head out into the African wilderness for a safari vacation and end up on the wrong side of all sorts of animals out there, as well as a group of poachers led by fellow American Mitch Hanover (Romijn's real-life husband Jerry O'Connell). And by the time the 30 minutes dedicated to establishing the characters of Lauren, Jack, their kids Noah (Michael Johnston) and Zoe (Isabel Bassett), and Zoe's boyfriend Billy (Chris Fisher) makes way for the action and thrills, you'll probably be ready to see these characters get put through the wringer, because they are not the most likeable bunch.
Billy is pretty much your usual movie hippie stoner. Interactions between Jack and everyone else have gotten strained for one reason or another. Things are awkward between Jack and Noah because Jack is dealing with the fact that his son is gay, Jack has been hiding the truth about his employment (or lack thereof) from Lauren, Zoe is going through a rebellious phase and has started referring to her father by his first name. Noah is the closest to likeable of the characters; Lauren would be up there with him if it weren't for the moment where she says she and the kids made Jack bring them to Africa because their Bora Bora beach vacations have gotten "boring". It's tough to side with someone who has had the opportunity to go on so many Bora Bora beach vacations that it has lost all of its appeal.
Then come the dumb decisions that put the family in danger in the first place and make it even more difficult for the viewer to care about the characters. Overcompensating for the problems his family has with him, Jack decides to drive them into the wilderness without a tour guide and passes through the safari park gateway without paying the safari fee or registering with officials. Not seeing any animals during the drive, Jack stupidly chooses to turn down a path that used to offer an "Off-Road Adventure Experience" but now has a "No Entry" warning on it. Whatever bad things happen to Jack, he has it coming. Oh, and don't expect Jack to get much better when everything falls apart around him. At first, he gets even worse.
So there's nothing to enjoy about watching the people. We have to hold on to the hope that the animal attacks we know are approaching are going to be entertaining. When they kick in, you have rhinos ramming vehicles, hyenas tracking people through the wilderness, cheetahs attacking characters and dragging them up into trees, and that's all cool. These animals don't get much attention in the "nature run amok" horror-thriller sub-genre, it's nice to see them get some time in the spotlight. But these animals are brought to the screen through the use of unconvincing CGI, and when they look this fake it's not much fun to watch them in action.
At that point, the only hope for the film shifts onto the shoulders of Jerry O'Connell. O'Connell has some great moments, but by the time he becomes the primary antagonist it's too little too late, and Bassett even squanders the opportunity to show him acting villainous toward Romijn.
Endangered Species is watchable. There are certainly worse ways to kill 101 minutes, and it does offer the chance to see some dumb and annoying characters get mauled or otherwise injured. But compared to how much B-movie fun it could have been based on the core ideas, it's about as disappointing as Jack is to his family. And it doesn't get a redemption arc.
The review of Endangered Species originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com
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