Matt's Movie Reviews Podcast · Matthew Pejkovic

The Rewind - Eddie Murphy

·1 hr·3 clips

48 Hours turned Eddie Murphy into a movie star with a redneck-bar monologue that changed the room.

Matt keeps the focus on Eddie Murphy's film legacy. With Bruce Isaacs, he moves from Murphy's Saturday Night Live breakout to the movies that made him a global star, especially Beverly Hills Cop, Shrek, and Dreamgirls. The tone stays warm throughout. Bruce and Matt treat Murphy as one of those performers who shaped a generation, and they keep circling back to how large his presence felt on screen. Beverly Hills Cop becomes the main case study. They dig into why Axel Foley works so well, from the friend-driven setup that sends him from Detroit to Los Angeles to the loose, cocky energy Murphy brings to the role. The movie's romance rules get especially interesting. The discussion notices that Foley never really has a conventional love interest, which opens into a wider look at the way 1980s action movies often coded the real emotional chemistry between men. Lethal Weapon comes up as a useful comparison. That contrast helps them tease out how action movies gave their heroes wives, grief, or overt romantic arcs, while Beverly Hills Cop stayed stranger and more centered on friendship and banter. The episode also gets into leading-man politics. Matt and Bruce talk through the idea that Eddie became a superstar without being pushed into the standard romantic-lead mold, and they connect that to Hollywood's racial dynamics in the 1980s. Tom Cruise is part of that comparison set. The point is not to rank stars, but to show how studios could build one kind of leading-man image while leaving another performer to break through on different terms. The conversation stays loose and conversational. It moves through references and side roads, the kind of pace that lets Bruce unpack craft, genre lineage, and performance without sounding boxed in. The closing stretch is playful. Matt and Bruce drift toward a Tropic Thunder comparison and end up joking about Robert Downey Jr.'s blackface performance and Rick Baker's makeup work. That detour keeps the episode loose. The whole thing feels like two people thinking out loud about why Eddie Murphy still matters, and why the films around him still make for a good argument.

As heard by us

A warm Eddie Murphy rethink that finds fresh angles on stardom, chemistry, and 80s action-movie rules.

Bruce Isaacs serves as a strong guide through Eddie Murphy's film career. The episode uses Beverly Hills Cop as the cleanest entry point into Murphy's rise from stand-up and SNL star to one of the biggest movie stars in the world, while returning to the question of why Axel…

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want Eddie Murphy's rise told through Beverly Hills Cop's weird, brilliant place in his movie stardom.

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