Netflix tends to rotate through its top movies pretty quickly with so many released and added, but A Family Affair at least had some time at the top. Now, it has been replaced by another Netflix original, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, bringing Eddie Murphy back to his famous role. And it could have been worse, it seems.
A Family Affair, starring Zac Efron, Joey King and Nicole Kidman, He made not review well, a 39% from critics and an even lower 30% from fans. But Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is doing very well, with 65% critic scores and an even higher 78% audience score. Given how bad many big Netflix movies can rate, rating on a curve, this is actually pretty good. Here is the official synopsis of the film:
“Detective Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) returns to Beverly Hills. After his daughter’s life is threatened, she (Taylor Paige) and Foley team up with a new partner (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and old friends Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and John Taggart (John Ashton) to raise the fire and uncover a conspiracy.”
Murphy is especially praised for not missing a beat despite the time away from the role and the idea that he really doesn’t play that much in big plays anymore. He now stars in the most watched movie in America (any Netflix movie at #1 at any given time will usually have more viewers than it does in actual theaters).
It has literally been thirty years since the last film in the series, with Beverly Hills Cop 3 being released in 1994 with the first film being released in 1984 as a genre classic. This new version, as you might expect, doesn’t have any of the same writers or directors. You won’t know director Mark Molloy compared to Tony Scott or John Landis who made 2 and 3 respectively as this is his first feature directorial role. Pretty good for a debut, and with his last project being a show about the ill-fated Quibi, which never aired.
The rest of the list looks as expected, as Jessica Alba’s Trigger Warning continues to fall and most of the other slots are taken up by the same five or so kids movies that are always there. A new addition is the infamous Warcraft movie, which some loved but many hated, and now you can judge for yourself as it has found its way to Netflix.
I’ll give Beverly Hills Cop a watch when I get a second, as I really want to see how Murphy does in the role again. By all accounts, pretty good.
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