From cinemablend: I have a hard time even typing this up. It just seems too stupid to be true. Alright, here we go. Beverly Hills Cop 4, fourth in a franchise of rated-R movies starring Eddie Murphy, will be a kids movie. No that is not a joke. God I wish it was.
Brett Ratner, who is in negotiations to direct the film, tells MTV: “10-year-old kids, 12-year-old kids don’t really know the old ‘Beverly Hills Cop.’ So it’s an opportunity to make it new for kids.” Take a second to go back and read that quote again, after you vomit.
When it was announced that Eddie Murphy was go for Beverly Hills Cop 4, I like a lot of people, assumed this was Eddie attempting to shed his recently created kid-friendly persona and go back to the edgy, interesting, rated-R performer he was in the 90s. Now it looks like the opposite is true. Beverly Hills Cop 4 is Eddie Murphy’s attempt to kiddify his old movies, thus making them suck as much as his recent, watered down, crap.
The hot new trend in Hollywood is of course, taking popular rated-R franchises and making them teen friendly. It was done successfully with Die Hard, with a pretty good PG-13 fourth installment in the franchise, and McG is currently working on a PG-13 Terminator. That’s bad enough. But this takes it to an entirely new level. We’re not talking about a PG-13 Beverly Hills Cop, if Ratner is targeting 10-year-olds, we’re talking PG folks. A PG Beverly Hills Cop movie.
I’ve never seen such shockingly blatant, open pandering. You’d think Ratner would at least have the sense to be ashamed of it. His reputation as the successful franchise’s antichrist is now certainly secure. Get ready to throw Beverly Hills Cop 4 up on a shelf with X-Men 3 and all the other great stuff he’s made millions for utterly ruining.
4 comments:
“10-year-old kids, 12-year-old kids don’t really know the old ‘Beverly Hills Cop.’"
So what? Seriously, so what? How can he puff this up as something that needs to happen, acquainting kids with a somewhat successful series of cop movies from two decades ago?
What else are today's 10 and 12 year olds unfamiliar with? Taxi Driver? Casablanca? The Teapot Dome scandal? The Lindy? Studebakers? I could go on and on.
In all fairness, the PG-13 movies of today are virtually indistinguishable from the R ratings of the 80's.
I recently watched X-Men 3 again and I thought it was just adequate despite the following problems:
1) What's with the "Professor X is dead, but if you wait till the end of the credits he might be alive after all" bee-yuleshit? This isn't a television series. There's no guarantee of a 4th movie so ending a trilogy with wishy washiness left a bad taste in my mouth.
2) Iceman is a tool and he made sure that every scene he was in would be as lame as possible.
3) I'm annoyed that Nightcrawler was omitted without so much as a mention. He was after all the scene stealer of the 2nd one. Beast was fine and all but he can't teleport.
4) Colossus had like 3 lines, none of which were meaningul.
5) Angel was utterly useless.
Die Hard 4 definitely neutralized the automatic disappointment of the PG-13 rating, I agree.
I also think the Cinemablend guy is being overly harsh on X3. I thought it was a better movie than anyone had a right to expect.
Having said that, I don't take issue with JSP's critiques, except I liked Iceman more.
I really liked X3 a helluva lot, don't get me wrong. I shouldn't have used the words "just adequate".
After the dust settled I think I lost some respect for Singer for ditching the X-Men franchise for Superman. But I shouldn't complain (but do anyhow) because X2 still stands as my favorite superhero flick to date.
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