a box office success upon release, despite not making as much as Beverly Hills Cop. The film debuted at number one at the US box office, earning $33 million on its opening weekend, a sales mark that would result in the film achieving that year's highest-opening weekend debut, as well as the highest grossing opening weekend of all time at the time. Beverly Hills Cop II grossed $153,665,036 in the United States and Canada, becoming the third biggest hit domestically at the box office that year, after Fatal Attraction and Three Men and a Baby, and grossed $276.6 million worldwide, the second highest-grossing film worldwide that year, behind Fatal Attraction. Critical reception The film received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 46% "rotten" rating, based on 39 reviews, with an average rating of 5.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Eddie Murphy remains appealing as the wisecracking Axel Foley, but Beverly Hills Cop II doesn't take him – or the viewer – anywhere new enough to justify a sequel". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 48 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale. Desson Howe of The Washington Post called it "a sequel that's as good as the original, if not better." Roger Ebert gave the film one star out of four and wrote, "What is comedy? That's a pretty basic question, I know, but Beverly Hills Cop II never thought to ask it." Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that the film is a skillful clone of the first film that can't match that one's novelty or excitement. Variety called it "a noisy, numbing, unimaginative, heartless remake of the original film." Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "It's hard to believe that the group who came up with the hard, clean edges of Top Gun, sleek and unfeeling though it may have been, could make a picture as crude, as muddled, as destructo-Derbyish as this one." "Beverly Hills Cop II was probably the most successful mediocre picture in history," Murphy said. "It made $250 million worldwide, and it was a half-assed movie. Cop II was basically a rehash of Cop I, but it wasn't as spontaneous and funny." Accolades Literature 1987: Robert Tine: Beverly Hills Cop