Winnipeg got not one — but two — shout-outs in a new Netflix movie released in Canada on Wednesday.
One mention of the city in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is during an exchange between character Axel Foley, played by Eddie Murphy, and Mike Woody, played by Kyle S. More, during a Detroit Red Wings hockey game.
“My great-grandfather was actually a hockey player in the negro leagues in Winnipeg,” Foley says about the fictional team, tricking Woody into believe it was real. “The Winnipeg Black Guys.”
MOVIE SCREENSHOT Winnipeg got not one — but two — shout-outs in a new Netflix movie Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.
Woody apologizes for not knowing about the all-Black league before Foley mocks him for falling for the joke.
The second scene takes place during a locker-room robbery where Foley walks in demanding to know where his gear is and is met with a gun pointed in his face.
When the robber asks who he is, Foley replies with, “You must not have got the memo. You didn’t hear about the Winnipeg trade? I’m the new man.”
This isn’t the first time Winnipeg has been in the spotlight on the big screen.
A 2019 mention of an organ donation from “St. Boniface, Winnipeg” in the popular medical drama Grey’s Anatomy gave hospital staff a good laugh when news about it was circulated through an internal email. The TV episode aired on May 1 of that year.
Perhaps the most famous mention of the Manitoba city is from one of the three mentions made in the Simpsons. In the clip from Season 7’s episode “Bart on the Road,” it depicts Bart Simpson and others on a road trip. Another car pulls up beside them with the windows down. Inside, a dad threatens to turn the car around if his children don’t start to behave.
The kids quiet down, but one of Bart’s friends leans out the window to smack the man on the head, prompting him to say, “That’s it, back to Winnipeg,” and he makes a U-turn on the highway.
A 2022 episode of the Simpsons briefly shows a bus with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers written on its side.
In an earlier episode, Homer Simpson and his father Abe use fake Canadian health cards to smuggle prescription drugs into the United States.
The “Now Entering Winnipeg” sign was featured and read, “We were born here, what’s your excuse?”
jura.mcilraith@freepress.mb.ca