Beverly Hills Cop II (1987)

Entertaining enough sequel isn't as sharp as the original and some parts felt like Murphy's stand-up routine, and while the plot itself was weak, did enjoy the on-screen friendships between Murphy, Reinhold and Ashton. 3.5/5

Well I suppose a sequel to the 1984 success was inevitable, and to be fair Tony Scott has managed to re-assemble the cast from the first film and recruit Jürgen Prochnow ("Dent") to adopt the Steven Berkoff role as baddie-in-chief. The rest of this is pretty much a straight copy of the original as Eddie Murphy's "Foley" reunites with "Ashton" (John Taggart) and "Rosewood" (Judge Reinhold) to get to the bottom of an assassination attempt on their beloved "Bogomil" (Ronny Cox) after he had been suspended for failing to make inroads into the media-dominating "alphabet crimes". What now ensues is really a vehicle for the star and his quick-mouth. The others continue to deliver well as foils for his antics, though this time they are more active participants and less unwilling victims! The plot is thin, but that doesn't matter - Prochnow offers just about enough menace and there are still plenty of perilous scenarios for them to, obviously, get trapped into and then escape from! It clearly isn't as fresh now, the characters are regurgitating themselves to some extent, but as sequels go this one retains much of the character and joie de vivre of the fish-out-of-water aspects that worked well before. It's not great, but it's an easy and entertaining film to watch.