A Family Affair
Netflix tends to rotate through its top movies pretty quickly with so many released and added, but A Family Affair did have at least a fair bit of time on top. Now, it’s been replaced by another Netflix original, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, bringing Eddie Murphy back to his famous role. And it could have gone worse, it seems.
A Family Affair, starring Zac Efron, Joey King and Nicole Kidman, did not review well, a 39% from critics and an even lower 30% from fans. But Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is actually doing pretty good, with a 65% critic scores and an even higher 78% audience score. Given how poorly many big Netflix movies can review, grading on a curve, that’s actually quite good. Here’s the official synopsis of the film:
“Detective Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) is back on the beat in Beverly Hills. After his daughter's life is threatened, she (Taylour Paige) and Foley team up with a new partner (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and old pals Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and John Taggart (John Ashton) to turn up the heat and uncover a conspiracy.”
Netflix
Murphy is being praised in particular for not losing a step despite all the time away from the role and the idea that he really doesn’t act all that much in major projects anymore. Now he’s starring in the most-watched movie in America (any Netflix film at #1 at any given time is usually going to be more watched than whatever’s in actual theaters).
It has quite literally been thirty years since the last movie in the series, with Beverly Hills Cop 3 out in 1994 with the first film releasing in 1984 as a genre classic. This new version, as you may expect, does not have any of the same writers or directors. You will not know director Mark Molloy compared to Tony Scott or John Landis who did 2 and 3 respectively, as this is his first feature film directing role. Pretty good for a debut, and with his last project being a show for the ill-fated Quibi, which never even 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. One new addition is the infamous Warcraft movie, which some loved but many hated, and now you can judge it for yourself given that it’s found its way to Netflix.
I’ll give Beverly Hills Cop a watch when I have a second, as I really want to see how Murphy does in the role again. From all accounts, pretty well.
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