-via IMDB.com
There was a time when Paramount Pictures made movies that weren't Big, behemoth Transformers spectacles. Back in the 1980s, they made smaller action comedies and many of them were quite entertaining. A bunch of them starred Eddie Murphy, including this one, The Golden Child.
The Golden Child was directed by the late Michael Ritchie in 1986, fresh off the success of Fletch from the year before, and it is evident in this film. There is a very stylistic similarity with that one in both tone and substance, even in the score, which seems to synth. Eddie Murphy is a private detective who is searching for a missing child, the Golden Child, a supernatural being he needs to protect from the forces of evil, played by Charles Dance, most recognized today from his run on Game of Thrones as the Lannister pater. Hilarity, of sorts, ensues from the clash of cultures between Murphy and the pseudo-spiritual Tibetan guardians of the child who hire him.
This part of the story is mostly harmless as they play Murphy as the out of touch one and the woman, Kee, and her associates as patient, tolerant and respectful of his cluelessness. I wonder though if any of these actors were actually Tibetan, I recognized a few though. I was troubled by the characterization of Khatmandu and Tibet as thoroughly unmodern and backwards.
Eddie Murphy plays a variation of the character he played throughout the 1980s and it works for him. There is a bit of CG special effects that do not age well, but are okay considering that this was one of the very beginnings of the use of that technology. Overall, the film is entertaining and worth a watch, although it does end abruptly in much the way all action comedy seemed to in the 80s.
