Saw Beverly Hills Cop, an obscenely 80s film which pretends to be a comedy despite only being a kind of lighthearted actions film. The action is light and humorous, but only in a riffing, quippy sort of way. There are no setup/punchline style jokes. Anyway, the film is fairly light and fun. The style of the whole thing is very, very 80s, with big hair, vinyl suits, and the gaudiest art gallery you've ever seen. In addition to being set in an inherently ridiculous era, it features Eddie Murphy quipping and joking and having a grand old time. This must be one of his more serious roles however as he spends most of it being serious and acting and only a tiny part of the time sleepwalking through easy-going jokes. It's a nice little film.
I was kind of annoyed at how Eddie Murphy's character smilingly introduces corruption and cronyism into the police force, but then again as an outsider I would prefer cops behave like the sort of pedantic, humorless, stick-in-the-mud that this film pokes fun at, so fair enough. Much more interesting to me were the moments that were not actually homoerotic but could easily be read that way. Several times men declare that they love each other and when Eddie is getting round the cops who are supposed to be tailing him, the sequence is shot in a seductive soft-focus lens. This is just me snickering at gay jokes I'm telling myself, but it was a source of amusement to me.
A light and amusing film, it's a paragon of an 80s film, not only in terms of the fashions on display, or in terms of the little slobs-vs-snobs theme, but also in that it's a by-the-numbers blockbuster. Winning protagonist, sexy femme, and big shoot-out set piece finale. A perfect time-waster all around.
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