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The Golden Child

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Film Review: The Golden Child (1986)@drax1561d

(source: tmdb.org)

In 1980s Eddie Murphy was the biggest comedic star in Hollywood, but his stardom had limits. His films had gritty urban setting depicted in realistic manner, and that, among other things, reflected in his characters using foul language. Murphy tried to broaden his appeal and audience base, so he tried his luck with films that were supposed to be more family-friendly. First such experiment was The Golden Child, 1986 fantasy action comedy directed by Michael Ritchie.

Title character, played by J. L. Reate, is Tibetan boy with powers to be bring kindness to the world. This something that evil demon (voiced by Frank Welker) wants to prevent, so he sends his chief minion Sardo Numpsa (played by Charles Dance) to abduct the boy from Tibetan temple and bring him to Los Angeles. Kee Nang (played by Charlotte Lewis) is a Tibetan priestess sent to bring the boy back and she seeks help from Chandler Jarrel (played by Eddie Murphy), social worker specialised in locating missing children. He is at first sceptical, but soon learns that the runaway girl he had been trying to find was killed as a part of ritual intended to make boy vulnerable to Numpsa. He decides to help Kee Nang and the quest brings him to Himalayas where he would have to find Ajanti knife, the only weapon that can harm the boy.

The Golden Child was relatively big hit at the box office, but critics didn’t like it, which is sentiment shared by Murphy, who would later describe it as one of the worse films of his career. Many of the complaints against the film are justified and they mostly stem from this being three different films unsuccessfully blended into one. The original script imagined The Golden Child as serious combination of detective film and adventure in style of Indiana Jones films. When Murphy became involved in project, the studios insisted on broad comedy with many scenes and lines of dialogues trying to use Murphy’s one-liners and street smart persona. Murphy himself on the set tried his hand as romantic lead, leading to forced love subplot which fails, because young English actress Charlotte Lewis, although attractive, doesn’t have much chemistry with popular comic. There are some interesting and funny scenes when Murphy is allowed to ad lib and use his comedic talents, and dream sequence in the middle of film stands out for its humour and creativity. Director Ritchie, specialist for comedies, doesn’t finds proper balance between the genres and The Golden Child suffers from tonal shifts, resulting in comedy being at odds with some dark content, like murder of a teenager. Film features some interesting production design and good use of Nepal locations, but its look is at times compromised by special effects made by George Lucas’ famed studio Industrial Light & Magic that look hopelessly dated today. Same thing can be said of annoying synthpop music by Michel Colombier which inexplicably replaced much more appropriate classical score by John Barry. Although initially successful, this film quickly sank to the obscurity, which is exactly opposite of what happened to Big Trouble in Little China, fantasy action comedy which shared its general theme and some of the cast (James Hong, Victor Wong and Peter Kwong). Inevitable comparisons show that the other film managed to earn its cult status by not being constrained by its main star. Murphy, however, in subsequent years continued to experiment with romance and family-friendly comedy, although with varied degree of success.

RATING: 4/10 (++)

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›Insomniac Movie Marathon: The Golden Child@rvgenaille2517d

-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 father. 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.

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›The Golden Child (film): more like the "golden years" of Eddie Murphy@gooddream2752d
There was a time where anything Eddie touched turned into money for studios. It is kind of a shock (to some) that after a string of pretty horrible movies, one of which holds a record for losing money (Pluto Nash) that Hollywood really doesn't want a whole lot to do with the guy outside of voice work anymore. However, there was a time that anything Murphy was involved in was guaranteed to make money.

Take The Golden Child, for example. This movie (IMO) is not a great movie. It is a pretty terrible script that if it weren't for the comedic brilliance that was Eddie Murphy in the 80's there is virtually no chance it would succeed. Virtually all critics panned this movie and with good reasons - it isn't good. Even Eddie Murphy is on the record saying The Golden Child was "a piece of S**T."

Only Roger Ebert game it a decent score and he later went on to say that he was incorrect in his original decision.

Despite all this negative press (and it was and is, almost entirely negative) people went to the theaters in droves in order to see it. That is how all encompassing Eddie's fame was in the mid-80's.

bonus points for knowing what happened here

That doesn't mean the film is without its high points. This is provided almost entirely by Eddie's comedic genius that I suppose the world grew tired of over the years. I find it is almost exactly the same thing as how the world at first loved Jim Carrey but now is kind of sick of him. I suppose both of these guys can cry all the way to the bank where they keep their 160 million dollars.

The plot of "The Golden Child" is odd at best. A young boy in Tibet has magical powers such as bringing things back to life and making beer cans dance and he is abducted for some reason (it is explained in the film but trust me, it is unimportant) and for some reason Chandler Jarrell (Murphy) is the "chosen one" who must rescue him. As is typical in this very tired plot-line, Jarrell doesn't believe what the messengers are telling him and for 80% of the movie he doesn't take his role in the mission seriously. This puts him in all sorts of bizarre predicaments in environments he is uncomfortable with (such as visiting temples in Tibet) only to see him whisked back to the United States because that is where the kidnappers decided to bring the "Golden Child" for some reason or another.

The movie stays entertaining only because of Murphy. The plot is dumb, the characters for the most part are also pretty bad and even though it was 1986 and our expectations were pretty low, the sequences that involved the extremely rudimentary CGI that existed at the time are not terribly impressive and even looked fake back then. Maybe I am expecting too much.

Perhaps I am being overly harsh but this film is basically Beverly Hills Cop with magical powers instead of drug-smuggling gangsters. I mean, even the soundtrack sounds interchangeable between the two movies. While there are a few iconic scenes that anyone who has seen it before will definitely remember, overall this one is easy to skip.

Overall this film (in my mind) embodies how valuable Eddie Murphy was as a star back then and how it really didn't matter how bad the script and screenplay were, his movies were ALWAYS going to make money. However, it really is not a good movie, and gets really boring really fast.

4 / 10

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›Insomniac Film Festival #94: The Golden Child@rvgenaille2849d
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.

Fun.

-all photos via IMDb.com.

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›Insomniac Film Festival #15: The Golden Child@rvgenaille3264d
-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.

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4 more reviews

4 / 10

Fun.