I fully expected to totally hate this movie, but Eddie Murphy managed to be charming enough to keep it pretty watchable. It’s still mostly a predictable rehash of the previous films, and it has some ridiculous plotholes and tropes, like:
- A character saying “I just have to do one more thing” and then getting caught so Axel has to figure things out, instead of that character doing the sensible thing and saying “I’m going to [list of planned actions and reasons].”
- A character gets a key piece of evidence that they could easily make copies of and/or put online, but they just hide it so there’s something everyone has to find.
- Axel and pals spend the whole movie stealing things and killing people, but everyone’s cool because it was in pursuit of justice. “Death and destruction? SOUNDS LIKE FOLEY’S ON THE CASE! HA HA HA HA!”
But it was a good movie to have on in the background while I was packing. No attention required.