Hearing Eddie Murphy: Get ready to laugh

Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley in "Beverly Hills Cop".

Source: https://nikdirga.com/2020/04/11/movies-i-have-never-seen-6-beverly-hills-cop-1984/

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One minute he was a Detroit cop in Beverly Hills, then he was looking for a very special child, then he was a prince trying to find his way in America.

Today I saw Eddie Murphy has a movie coming out for Christmas, and it just reminded me of all these roles, and more, as he really got his career going in the ‘80s.

Live, it’s Saturday night
Eddie Murphy was still a teenager, 18 years old I believe, when he came to prominence on “Saturday Night Live”, with characters such as Buckwheat.

Sadly, back then, peasant vision did not carry “Saturday Night Live”. I never did get to see Eddie Murphy on the show until later in clips and reruns.

Movie bound
I don’t know why it was, but I had this desire to see all of Eddie Murphy’s movies, kind of like wanting to complete a set of hockey cards.

His first two movies were good, and sent him on his way.

It started with “48 Hrs.” in 1982, where Murphy teamed up with Nick Nolte to catch two bad guys. Nolte plays a cop and Murphy plays a convict, who have 48 hours to solve the crime.

“Trading Places” came out in 1983, and tells the story of a rich stock broker, played by Dan Aykroyd, and a poor street hustler, played by Murphy, who trade places.

One of the jokes I remember takes place in a bar where Nolte and Murphy are about to order drinks. The bartender looks at Murphy and says, “Maybe you should have a Black Russian” and laughs hardily. Murphy’s reaction is priceless. He just starts laughing harder and harder, making the bartender look stupid. It was my first look at part of his comedic timing and his charm.

It is interesting that these movies, both comedies, explore the idea of different worlds colliding. In “48 Hrs.” it is the different worlds of cop and convict, while in “Trading Places” it is the different worlds of rich and poor.

Incidentally, I completed this set, by watching both movies on TV. That meant they were edited for content, including language, and were cut up by commercials.

Turning point
The year 1984 would be a turning point in Eddie Murphy’s career. It started with a role in “Best Defence”. I have never seen this movie, and all I really know about it is that it involved tanks, starred Dudley Moore and was one of four movies Kate Capshaw was in that year, along with “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”, “Windy City”, and “Dreamscape”.

Later that same year, Eddie Murphy was in a movie that catapulted him to super stardom.

Beverly Hills Cop
It was called “Beverly Hills Cop”. Murphy played Axel Foley, a Detroit city detective, who chases a case to Beverly Hills where he runs afoul of the local police, but then works with them to get the bad guys.

I wanted to see this movie in the theatre. It was around Christmas time, and my grandmother was dying in the hospital. To get our mind off things, my sister and I decided to go to a movie. We went to the Paramount Theatre in downtown Lethbridge. Our first choice was “Beverly Hills Cop”, but it was rated “R” and I was only 14 years old, so I couldn’t get in. Our second choice was “Dune”. It was also rate “R”. We eventually settled on “2010: Odyssey Two”.

It was another year before I actually saw “Beverly Hills Cop”, when my best friend Chris Vining and I rented and watched it at his place in Coaldale.

The scene I will always remember is when Axel Foley is in a holding cell with a pay phone. The police come to get him and he pauses, and says they have to wait. “I just ordered a pizza.”

The really funny thing is I got to see chunks of the movie because the soundtrack was so popular. Music videos for “The Heat is On,” by Glenn Frey; “The Neutron Dane” by the Pointer Sisters; and the instrumental “Axel F” by Harold Faltermeyer all had excerpts from the movie.

More than anything, I recall laughing a lot.

He’s golden
It was hard for me to believe Murphy’s next movie was made in 1986, because I saw it much later.

“The Golden Child” came out in 1986 and has Eddie Murphy playing a social worker who discovers he may be the chosen one. He has to save the aforementioned Golden Child, who has mythical powers but has been kidnapped.

I did not see “The Golden Child” until the Fall of 1987. It was on pay TV when I lived in student residence on the University of Alberta campus.

The scene I will always remember is one my spouse and I just referred to the other day. Murphy is being confronted by one of the bad guys, grabs him by the lapels and gets really close.

Murphy winces.

“There’s a whole thing of Tic-Tacs in my pocket. Take as many as you like,” he said. “Please.”

In another scene, someone with mystical powers twists a pop can into a live aluminum man, that starts dancing.

A guy on our floor in res, Scott Reeb, saw that movie. He dug into our pile of used bottles and cans, and turned pop cans into those little men. He even gave me one which I kept in my room for the rest of the school year.

Sequel
The next Eddie Murphy movie I actually saw in the theatre, was in the Spring of 1987. It was the sequel, “Beverly Hills Cop II”.

That night will be burned in my memory forever.

I was in Grade 12, and thought this girl I liked in Grade 11 liked me too. I started talking to her and there was kind of a connection. She was big into drama, and I had actually written a play earlier that year. I told her about it, and she expressed interest in reading it. She was headed off on a band trip that week, so I slipped a little poem in with the play to ask her out.

The next day, a friend of hers passed a note the girl had given me. It was a poem of her own, accepting my date.

I ended up going on a date with her that was an absolute disaster. We went to see the movie “The Secret of My Success”, and it was like a completely different person was with me. In school she had been cheery, flirty, and energetic. In my car, she just shut right down. She did not say anything unless I asked her a question, and even then it was a yes or no answer. It was so awkward. I have never experienced anything like it in my whole life. I ended up taking her home right after the movie.

That should have been it, but I was too dumb to take that as a hint. Plus grad was coming up soon after, and I really did not want to go alone.

So, I asked her out again. Just as surprising, she said yes again.

This time, I was a bit more prepared. I knew exactly what movie to go see – “Beverly Hills Cop II”.

It seemed to work. The movie was hilarious, and I remember laughing from beginning to end. Not only was Eddie Murphy awesome, but so was Judge Reinhold as Billy Rosewood, one of the Beverly Hills detectives. Every so often, I snuck a peek at my date and she was laughing just as hard. She was having a good time. That gave me some hope.

We talked about the movie on the way home. When I dropped her off, I still remember what she said.

“That movie was aces.”

I did take her to grad, and saw her one more time after that.

Movie music

One of the outstanding memories of “Beverly Hills Cop II” was the booming soundtrack song “Shakedown”, by Bob Seger, minus the Silver Bullet Band. It was a number one hit too.

This time around, I had actually seen the movie, before I saw scenes of it in the music video for “Shakedown.”

Coming to Lethbridge
While I was away at university, a new theatre complex was built in Lethbridge. When I moved back to the farm in the Spring of 1988, after my first year of university I did two things. One was renewing a friendship with Billy Joe Ebner, a a neighbour who was a year younger and two grades behind me. The other was take full advantage of those new theatres.

Bill and I went to a few movies together, but the one that sticks out is “Coming to America”. Murphy plays an African prince who comes to America seeking true love, and fleeing an arranged marriage. He is accompanied by Semmi, his sidekick or wing man, played by Arsenio Hall, who is always chasing women.

Murphy hits another home run with “Coming to America”, because it is another very funny movie.

A couple weeks after we saw “Coming to America”, we were cruising down Mayor Magrath one Friday night, when we caught the eye of these girls in a car beside us. We started following each other, and playing a game of cat and mouse up and down the strip. It was a pretty common game to play back then, or at least it was for us.

Well, at one point they led us to this parking lot, presumably to actually talk to us.

As Bill pulled up, he said, “Hey Semmi…”

I laughed pretty hard.

By the way, it turned out we really didn’t have too much to say to each other. I guess the magic was literally in the chase – for all of us.

Music man
Eddie Murphy could also sing. In 1985, he released the single “Party All the Time”, from his debut album “How Could it Be”. It was a catchy tune that went all the way to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

I remember in English 20, we were doing some group work, and one of the girls asked what are you doing this weekend.

One of the guys replied, “Partying.”

At that point, he started singing, “My girl wants to party all the time, party all the time…”

The girl then said how surprised she was Eddie Murphy sang that song, but that in the video he looked so cut with his head phones. Not cut like handsome, but cute like a little boy.

After all, Eddie Murphy was about 25 years old at the time.

The years after
“Coming to America” was the last Eddie Murphy movie I saw in the 1980s. He also did “Eddie Murphy: Raw” in 1987, which I never saw, but I did hear it on tape. He had some pretty funny bits in it too. And he did “Harlem Nights” in 1989.

Over the next few years he had varying degrees of success with movies such as “Another 48 Hrs.”; “Boomerang”; “The Distinguished Gentleman”; “Beverly Hills Cop III”; “The Nutty Professor”; “Metro”; “Dr. Dolittle”; “Bowfinger”; “The Adventures of Pluto Nash”; “I Spy”; “Dreamgirls” and so much more.

Parting thoughts
Eddie Murphy is a talented actor and comedian. That really comes out in the very different projects he has done over the years.

“Raw” was just that, and could have been shorthand for “Raw-nchy” because there is some pretty crude humour in there.

Yet, he could also be fun-loving like he was as Axel Foley in “Beverly Hills Cop”, but still with an edge.

Then, he was downright adorable as the prince in “Coming to America”, where he was understated in his humour, and even compared to Cary Grant by Larry Day on “The Movie Show”.

At the end of the day, I always knew when I went to an Eddie Murphy, I was prepared to laugh.

He never disappointed.