If you’re amazed that we’re talking about “Beverly Hills Cop” some 40 years after that movie essentially birthed the buddy-cop comedy genre (here’s looking at you, “Lethal Weapon” and “Bad Boys”), Eddie Murphy shares your sense of wonder.
“The pope was 47 when the first movie came out, I’m talking about the sitting one (Pope Francis),” Murphy reflects in a conversation with USA TODAY. “So he might have seen it. The pope has probably seen ‘Beverly Hills Cop.’ Wow.”
Murphy’s somewhat tongue-in-smirking-cheek speculation might extend to the movie’s two sequels, in 1987 and 1994. And perhaps – if the pontiff indeed is an Axel Foley fan – the fourth film of the enduring franchise, “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” (streaming Wednesday on Netflix).
“Axel and all the characters, they’re very much part of the lexicon,” says Murphy, 63. “I mean, somewhere in the world, one of those movies is on TV right now.”
For this installment, “it really was mainly about getting a good script and getting to the set, and that was it. As soon as they said ‘Action,’ I was Axel again.”
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Judge Reinhold, who returns once again as Foley sidekick Billy Rosewood, joining fellow returnee John Ashton as cop John Taggart, says when the trio hopped in a squad car again, fireworks ignited.
“I hadn’t seen Eddie in…
