Beverly Hills Cop 5 Ways Axel Foley Is Eddie Murphys Best Character (& 5 Alternatives)

Beverly Hills Cop: 5 Ways Axel Foley Is Eddie Murphy’s Best Character (& 5 Alternatives)

Eddie Murphy has played so many great roles over the years, but Axel Foley from Beverly Hills Cop might just be his best one of all.

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An instant hit with critics and audiences alike, Beverly Hills Cop made Eddie Murphy a star overnight. It wasn’t his first movie, but it was his first starring vehicle cashing in on how popular he’d become from his stint on Saturday Night Live. Although it was initially conceived as a straight action movie for Sylvester Stallone to star in, Murphy really made Beverly Hills Cop his own.

The lead role, Axel Foley, has become Murphy’s defining character. All these years later, Axel is still the best role that Murphy has ever played, although a few subsequent roles have come close.

10 Axel Is The Best: His Undercover Work Allowed For Constant Improvisation

One thing that Eddie Murphy and Axel Foley have in common is that they’re great improvisers. Axel can talk his way into any building in an undercover persona, which went hand-in-hand with Murphy’s improv skills.

When Axel smooth-talks his way into the bad guy’s office or makes a scene in a hotel lobby under the guise of a reporter, Murphy gets to play a character playing a character and the results are always brilliant.

9 Alternative: Jiff Ramsey

Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy made for a brilliant on-screen pairing in Bowfinger, with the former playing the titular movie producer and the latter playing both Kit Ramsey, an A-list movie star, and Jiff Ramsey, his dim-witted twin brother who Bowfinger enlists to double as Kit in his latest project.

Murphy gives a terrific turn as Kit as he becomes paranoid about the film getting made around him, but Jiff is by far his funniest character in the movie (and the one he had the most fun ad-libbing with).

8 Axel Is The Best: He Shares Fantastic Chemistry With His Co-Stars

Eddie Murphy often shares terrific on-screen chemistry with his co-stars, from Mike Myers in Shrek to Arsenio Hall in Coming to America to Dan Aykroyd in Trading Places.

But in Beverly Hills Cop, he shares fantastic chemistry with all his co-stars, particularly Judge Reinhold as Detective Rosewood and John Ashton as Sergeant Taggart. He also shares tangible romantic tension with the female lead, Lisa Eilbacher.

7 Alternative: Professor Sherman Klump / Buddy Love

In Eddie Murphy’s remake of The Nutty Professor, he plays almost the entire Klump family. While he’s hysterical in every role, he shows off themost range as the lead protagonist, Professor Sherman Klump, who morphs into the antagonist, Buddy Love, when he takes his weight loss serum.

Murphy brings an earnest sweetness to Sherman that is brilliantly contrasted when Buddy Love takes over with exaggerated confidence and a brazen attitude.

6 Axel Is The Best: It Defined His Screen Persona

Every comedic actor has their first blockbuster starring vehicle that defines their on-screen persona. For Will Ferrell, it was Anchorman. For Adam Sandler, it was Happy Gilmore. For Jim Carrey, it was the triple whammy of The Mask, Dumb and Dumber, and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

And for Eddie Murphy, it was Beverly Hills Cop. The script was initially conceived as a dark action drama by Sylvester Stallone, who retooled his version as the considerably worse Cobra. Beverly Hills Cop became a vehicle for Murphy and he made it his own, using the role of Axel Foley to define his screen persona.

5 Alternative: Mr. Robinson

In the recurring Saturday Night Live sketch “Mister Robinson’s Neighborhood,” Eddie Murphy played a parody of Mr. Rogers called Mr. Robinson. He spoke in the same soft, friendly voice as Mr. Rogers, which was juxtaposed hilariously against Mr. Robinson’s grittier neighborhood.

Murphy reprised the role of Mr. Robinson when he hosted SNL last year and he was just as hysterical as he was when he debuted in the ‘80s.

4 Axel Is The Best: He’s A Perfect Counterpoint To Typical Action Heroes

As the protagonist of a straight action script that got reworked as a comedy, Axel Foley is the perfect antidote to typical action heroes. He’s not a parody of characters like John Rambo and the T-800, but he is a brilliantly drawn counterpoint to them as a regular cop who takes his job seriously (without necessarily following every rule).

Whereas the musclebound tough guys played by Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger deliver crummy one-liners with a straight face, Axel fires off one hysterical one-liner after another, all delivered with Eddie Murphy’s unparalleled comic energy.

3 Alternative: Rudy Ray Moore

Murphy made one heck of a comeback in 2019 with the release of Dolemite is My Name, a biopic of Rudy Ray Moore that’s both an informative chronicle of his groundbreaking career and a spectacularly made comedy about a creative team defying the odds to get their crazy movie made.

In addition to being one of the most influential comedians of all time, Moore has been nicknamed “the Godfather of Rap.” Murphy gave a performance that lived up to Moore’s legacy and generated Oscar buzz (sadly, to no avail).

2 Axel Is The Best: He’s A Fish Out Of Water

At its core, Beverly Hills Cop is a fish-out-of-water story about the culture shock experienced by a Detroit cop who leaves behind his grimy hometown and heads out west to investigate a crime.

From the moment he arrives in Beverly Hills, the rich, snooty residents are appaled by Axel’s brash behavior and taken aback by his street smarts.

1 Alternative: Donkey

Murphy’s first animated movie role was that of Mushu in Disney’s Mulan. He certainly gave an iconic performance in the role, but his turn as a different cartoon animal sidekick, Donkey in DreamWorks’ Shrek franchise, was on another level.

It seems that DreamWorks gave Murphy a lot more creative freedom than Disney. He really lets loose in the role of Shrek’s motormouth mule.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/beverly-hills-cop-axel-foley-eddie-murphy-best-character/

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