Netflix’s newest original release has also become its most widely watched in its first week, breaking the record for 2024, despite a rather underwhelmed critical reception.
Eddie Murphy’s new sequel, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, marks his fourth movie in the comedy franchise – and has become Netflix’s most successful film of the year upon release so far.
As with most new films on the streaming platform, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F topped the charts in its first week of release – but it captured 41,000,000 views, which is more than any other film has managed on Netflix during its initial release.
This is based on 80,700,000 hours viewed of the movie according to Tudum, with Netflix working out its final estimation of how many times it was watched by dividing that number by its one hour 58-minute run-time.
Of course, the streamer also likes to assume that each film viewing on its platform by an account holder equates to an average of two people watching together, so it’s possible as many as 82 million people may have watched it so far.
The next film to do so well in its first week of release was Millie Bobby Brown vehicle Damsel, despite claims it was a ‘knock-off Hunger Games’.
Damsel managed 35.3m views in its first week, before going to become the biggest new film yet of the year when it entered Netflix’s all-time top 10.
However, it’s worth noting that Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F was released on a Wednesday rather than Netflix’s traditional choice of a Friday for its new films.
When compiling its weekly top 10 charts, Netflix runs its data from Monday – Sunday, meaning that usually a film’s first week is in fact merely its first three days on the streamer.
For example, that’s how long it took Jennifer Lopez’s $100m sci-fi action movie Atlas to clock in a healthy 28m views – whereas Axel F was afforded two days more on release to gather its 41m.
Second in this week’s charts is A Family Affair, the age-gap rom-com with Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman that was also damned with faint praise as a ‘laundry film’ when it was released.
The film was not exactly universally praised upon its release, with The Observer dubbing it ‘lazy, formulaic stuff that diminishes the brash brilliance and danger of [Eddie Murpy]’s early career work’, while Newsday’s reviewer quipped: ‘The heat is definitely off.’
Meanwhile, Washington Post described Axel F as ‘the cinematic equivalent of trying on your prom suit from 1984. Maybe it still fits, but not in the places it used to, and if you try to moonwalk, you’ll probably get a hernia’.
‘Remember when Martin Scorsese said that streaming platforms were transforming cinema into meaningless commercial content and then everyone pilloried him for it? Behold, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F,’ sniped The Times in its two-star review.
However, it still sits on a respectable 67% fresh score on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.
That’s also far from the lowest of the franchise, with that dubious honour belonging to Beverly Hills Cop 3 on an utterly awful 11%.
The 1980s original, meanwhile, boasts an impressive certified fresh 82% rating, while the first sequel plummets down to 48%.
Many fans also loved Axel F, with @RachelBuk posting on X: ‘Caught up with the new Beverly Hills Cop last night. Loved it.
‘Very funny, with the action coming thick & fast, a lot reminiscent of before. I particularly liked the helicopter sequence! Would have been a great cinema release.’
Fan Markia also insisted that the movie’s producers had ‘nailed it’.
‘Over 20 years since the last one??! Yeah they snapped.’
Meanwhile, @nikcoppin argued that it was ‘far from being the best in the franchise, but more than good enough to help forget that Wally World nonsense which preceded it’.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is streaming on Netflix now.
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