May 25, 1994
BEVERLY HILLS COP is one of those movies that was huge for me as a kid, but that I don’t really care much about anymore. Its significance to me was that it was my first theatrical R-rated movie and an important early chapter in my appreciation for the art of cursing. Also my brother bought sheet music for Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F Theme” and learned to play it on piano. That song is still a jam, but the movie is just one of those things I see parts of on cable and find some bits mildly amusing. I thought I remembered liking the very stupid, but more stylish sequel directed by Tony Scott when I watched it a long time ago, but reading my review again I don’t sound all that enthused.
For those reasons I was actually pretty optimistic about checking out BEVERLY HILLS COP III (which I definitely didn’t see in theaters, think I saw on video at some point, but maybe not because it didn’t seem very familiar). I figured since I don’t have much of an attachment to those other ones I would be more open to it than all the people who hated it at the time. And though I understand the modern rejection of director John Landis (COMING TO AMERICA) due to the fatal helicopter crash on the set of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE, I happen to really love some of his movies, and think he’s a good director. Plus this is written by Steven E. de Souza (48 HRS., COMMANDO, THE RUNNING MAN, DIE HARD, RICOCHET). And the one thing I remembered was that there were scenes shot at Great America, a theme park my family used to go to when visiting grandparents in California. I thought that might be cool to see.
Um, yeah, this is pretty bad though. Starts out semi-interesting, gets very tedious. Oh well. (read the rest of this shit…)
It’s that time of year again. The time when the sun comes out and my instincts tell me to crawl into a dark theater. It’s also become the time when I take a deeper look at summer movie entertainment of the past. Especially in this strange year, when the vaccines are starting to kick in but an immediate return to normal life seems unlikely, there’s something I find very comforting and fascinating about this form of time travel. I especially like looking at times I remember living in, but when I was too young to see everything that came out or to understand them in the way I would now. It’s partly nostalgia but partly wanting to learn about everything I missed.
HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE is the definition of a D.I.Y. movie. Comedian Robert Townsend got tired of fighting for the shitty roles that Hollywood had available to him as a black man, so he ran up his credit cards to produce and direct his own movie, casting himself as Bobby Taylor, an actor not quite yet tired of fighting for the shitty roles that Hollywood has available to him as a black man. But it’s also a sketch movie in kind of the way UHF was later. The main story tangents into parody TV shows and fantasy sequences and stuff where he gets to play different roles.
