Film Review: The Golden Child (1986)

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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