He's become a legend. Have you ever tried to fight a legend?

Robin and Marian

(1976)

(SPOILERS) It’s ironic that Russell Crowe was older than Sean Connery is here when he starred in Ridley Scott’s malformed Robin Hood origins tale in 2010. Because Robin and Marian finds the mythic character at the end of the road. This is an elegiac tale of missed opportunities for love and fulfillment. If it never quite becomes the heartfelt meditation it wants to be, that is more down to Richard Lester’s perfunctory direction rather than the sincere performances from an outstanding cast.

Robin is well into middle age when the film begins; he and Little John (Nicol Williamson) have followed Richard the Lion-Heart (Richard Harris) through the Crusades and now see him die in France. Returning to England, Robin once again finds himself on the other side of the law, reuniting with Marian (Audrey Hepburn, returning to the screen after an eight-year absence to raise her family) and seeking shelter from the Sheriff of Nottingham (Robert Shaw) in Sherwood Forest. King John (Ian Holm), informed of the groundswell of support for the outlaw, sends men into the Forest to quash his rebellion.

Richard Lester made his mark directing The Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night and Help! Throughout the ‘60s he experimental style infused comedy movies with a more vibrant, modern sensibility. By the start of ‘70s, he had suffered a major flop (The Bedsitting Room) and then managed to reinvent himself as a more commercial force with The Three Musketeers for Alexander Salkind (he would go on to direct two, or, at least, one and a half, Superman movies for the producer). But he continued to work mainly in the comedy genre (be it corrosive black comedy Petulia or the swashbuckling frivolity of the Alexander Dumas). Action thriller Juggernaught was an exception.

Whilst there is a rich vein of humour running through it, there wasn’t much precedent for the reflective tone of Robin and Marian. Unfortunately, Lester fails to imbue it with much in the way of lyricism. For that he must rely on the actors; even James Goldman’s script seems more willing to announce its themes than properly explore them. The film is certainly very nicely shot (in Spain, due to the tax status of certain cast members) by cinematographer David Watkin (a regular on Lester’s films, and also responsible for showing off scenery in Out of Africa) but the director’s staging is flat and perfunctory. And, while this is hardly an action movie, the fights are scrappily choreographed and edited (the final duel excepted). There’s a difference between creating a contemplative tone and plain poorly pacing; too often Robin and Marian is afflicted with the latter.

As with Lester’s How I Won the War, there a strong anti-war message is present. We are introduced to Richard as a dyspeptic, unbalanced monarch ready to kill women and children. Robin is sick of the death and destruction, wondering at the actions he was required to perform in the name of God, but he knows no other way to live (hence his confrontation with the Sheriff).

Where this leaves his final scenes with Marian is another matter. I’m sure Goldman was sincere in his choice to have Robin die poisoned by Marian. It forms a poetic end in his mind, as he would never have a day like this again (and his legend will live on). But Lester fails to sell this. Marian’s choice just seems loony; maybe this is intended, that her devotion to God has corrupted her outlook. After all, she also poisons herself and admits she loves Robin more than God. The problem is, her act comes out of nowhere and Robin only accepts his fate after much protest. Was Robin dying anyway? Maybe, but he didn’t seem to think so. It seems to be an ending that works for many viewers, but Lester’s “meat and potatoes” execution renders it devoid of tragic romance for me.

Connery obviously built up a rapport with his director, as they would team up again for Cuba a few years later. If Robin and Marian was a critical success and a commercial disappointment, Cuba saw them bottom out in both areas. Connery didn’t work with his director subsequently, placing much of the blame at his door.

Connery and Hepburn are great together, however. The Scot looks a good 10 or 15 years older than he actually is here, but it works for the character. Hepburn is a striking as ever. There is a sincerity and melancholy to their relationship that comes through in spite of the failings of script and direction.

Williamson doesn’t have the brawn of your typical Little John, but he’s a charismatic, lively presence. Shaw reunites with Connery (they previously sparred in From Russia With Love) and makes a less out-and-out villain of Nottingham than you’d expect. He’s portrayed as an intelligent man, with respect for Robin and a sense of honour. Also working with Connery again, Harris relishes his crazed early scenes, which are highly memorable, and they set the scene for a world Robin no longer has much place in. Denholm Elliott is an unlikely Will Scarlet and Ronnie Barker a likely Friar Tuck. Holm is onscreen all too briefly as John, distracted from his edicts by the attentions of his child bride (played by Victoria Abril). John Barry’s score is evocative, very much in Dances with Wolves mode.

This is often cited as one of Connery’s best performances, and there is definitely a warmth and tenderness in his interplay with Hepburn that you don’t often get to see. It’s just a shame that the film as a whole doesn’t make the most of the solid premise and fine cast.

*** 

He is brilliant, ruthless and he will not hesitate to kill every single one of you.

Star Trek Into Darkness

(2013)

(SPOILERS) J. J. Abrams sequel to his reboot of a series he professes never to have liked very much looks to like it will achieve exactly what Paramount wanted. If the 2009 film was a huge hit in the States, its international business was still disproportionately small. So it was ever thus for the franchise’s bankability. But the four years between installments have seen its reputation and exposure grow; Abrams has made Star Trek cool, and now it isn’t only Americans who want to see it. Whether that receptiveness is deserved is a different matter.

There’s a distinct sense that everyone involved with STID is hedging their bets, and thus moving in exactly the opposite direction of a predecessor that was ready to sacrifice a number of sacred cows to stir things up. The film is hugely enjoyable in the moment for the thrill ride sensibility fashioned by its director, but leaves one with a growing sense of dissatisfaction at its cheap emotional shorthand and clumsy lapses into narrative incoherence.

Star Trek (2009) is by far the superior film. It proved to be an exhilarating reinvention of a series I liked well enough but never had a great deal of passion for; on exiting the cinema I could easily have gone straight back in to watch it again. I couldn’t say that about STID, although I might have been tempted to rewatch individual scenes in an attempt to clarify many of the whos, whys and whens of motivation and, indeed, assess whether any of it stacks up once the dust of its director’s sensory bombardment has settled.

Certainly, Abrams stages individual action sequences with as ready aplomb as he did first time round, but on an even greater scale. Yet STID doesn't flow as well. It seems dubiously content to return to the ground covered in the earlier film, as if it is frightened to seek out new worlds, new civilisations etc.  The notes it hits are so over-familiar in places that you will more likely groan at the lack of inspiration rather than grin in recognition of the shout-outs, be they to its predecessor and to the lore it is drawing on.

Typical of the film’s hesitation is the peculiar decision not to have started the Enterprise’s five-year mission. Surely, that is exactly where the first outing left us? Instead, we begin breathlessly mid-adventure, Indiana Jones-style, as Kirk disobeys the Prime Directive in order to save Spock (who seems to be disobeying the Prime Directive in saving this planet from destruction anyway, so presumably in the minds of writers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof if an alien civilization doesn’t actually see you, it ain’t interference).

There are a number of points right from the off that illustrate the “Cool first, plot logic a distant second” during this sequence, but I was most impressed by the alien race’s artistic skills, coming up with a remarkable blueprint of the Enterprise drawn in the dirt. The consequence of all this is to revert to the characters’ earlier tensions so they can work through them all over again. Kirk’s hotheaded instinct gets him into trouble with Pike (again) and he is demoted, so he has to prove himself (again). Spock’s by-the-book behaviour places duty above friendship (again), so the clash between their attitudes becomes the lifeblood of the movie (again).

This leads to a surprisingly affecting inversion of the one great Star Trek movie (The Wrath of Khan).  I was surprised this scene worked as well as it did for me, as arguably the friendship between the two hasn’t been earned at this point, and it shows a continuation of the cheapening of death across the fantasy and SF genre. It’s probably unfair to point to Buffy for starting this trend, but death and immediate resurrection appear to be a lazy go-to for writers in place of actual substance (something like the current iteration of Doctor Who has over-used the device to the point of eliminating all narrative tension and stakes). 

I suppose it’s merely a reflection of the shifting attitudes to age that the adults of TOS (the original series) are now petulant and immature boy-men. Spock and Uhura are fighting so there’s a romcom scene of them sparring ,with Kirk caught in the middle. As they embark on a mission. The performers sell it, and it’s superficially quite amusing (and gives rise to a touching moment on Spock’s part as he expands on why he doesn’t show that he cares) but it does make you wonder if this new version of Star Trek should be quite so malleable. It also highlights an approach to modern storytelling, whereby character development is not germane to the story, but a separate entity to be overlaid whether it fits or not. The consequence is to make a meal of once economically rendered emotional beats; the emphasis, ironically, lessens the impact. Here, we know that Kirk and Spock have to be friends due to Shat and Nimoy. So their friendship (and problems with it) are overtly commented on time and again throughout, as if this will somehow justify the death scene. Everything has to be big and full of impact, do distract from troubled minutiae. Abrams and his crew have hit on a perversely successful, fast food formula; it provides a quick fix, but there is no sustenance there.

But the total effect is that we have travelled no further forward with this crew than before. STID is stuck in the holding pattern of the first film, as with Bond in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace. It didn’t work well for Bond and, if STID is a far superior film to QoS, it doesn’t work for the Enterprise crew. It evidences what happens when filmmakers become nervous about how to repeat their success; they literally do opt to repeat themselves.

Interviews with the writers post- the success of Trek ’09 saw Khan brought up regularly, and they showed understandable caginess over the prospect of approaching the most iconic villain of Trek (outside of the Klingons). That they ultimately chose to go there is a creative failure in all sorts of ways, but mostly it’s just remarkably gutless. Having said that, I don’t have an enormous problem with the reinvention of Khan (although I’m not sure how it can be justified if the two universes were supposed to be the same before the divergent events of Trek ’09), but the lack of care over the villains generally is a problem. The extent to which he works as a bad guy is all down to Benedict Cumberhatch’s authoritative performance, and owes nothing to the rushed info-dumping of his back story and the murky and confused exposition of his allegiances and motivations. He’s a more impressive villain than Eric Bana’s Nero, but he’s ultimately just as empty. So it leads one to conclude that the writers were banking on the baggage of the Khan name doing most of the work for them (and the getting Nimoy to show up and gravely intone how dangerous trad-Khan to seal the deal).

There are similar problems with Peter Weller’s Admiral Marcus, whose villainy seems like real world commentary masquerading as character. It’s a shame, as I like Weller, but he’s just the stock bad guy you thought was a good guy. Who happens to be Carol Marcus’ dad (she of Wrath of Khan, remember?) Given all the referencing here, I was surprised he didn’t say, “Please drop your shields. You have 20 seconds to comply”. It would at least have given him one memorable line.

The Star Trek universe future is now a thoroughly corrupt place, chock full of conspiracies to wage war, covert operations (Section 31), and private security firms employed on huge black evil militarised starships.

There has been a fair bit of discussion already over the extent to which co-writer Roberto Orci’s “Truther” credentials as a conspiracy theorist have impacted and/or been detrimental to the plotting of STID. His purported stance is much maligned/ridiculed in some quarters of the Internet, which is unsurprising; if there’s one area guaranteed to enrage, it’s conspiracy theories, on whatever side of the fence one sits. What’s ironic about STID is how garbled and incoherent the plotting of this conspiracy is; you’d have thought that, as dedicated as he is, Orci would single out precisely the actions of Marcus and Khan and to what ends. I’ve seen few comments from anyone who is completely clear on this. Perhaps Orci is purposefully rendering in his narrative the uncertainty involved in conspiracies on who did what and why in respect of 9/11, WMD, Iraq etc.? But the answer is much less intricate; it’s because he and his fellow writers continually drop the ball.

We’re told that Marcus revived Khan and used his heightened intelligence to develop weaponry to prepare for the Federation’s inevitable war with the Klingon Empire. And that the hold he had over Khan was the promise to return the 72 members of his crew (all genetically advance master race types; Khan is now decidedly Aryan, unlike Ricardo Montalban’s version). Khan tells Kirk that Marcus reneged; the terrorist act Khan perpetrates at the opening of the film (which leads to his attack on Starfleet elite personnel, including Marcus) was one of revenge against him. We also learn that Khan hid his cryogenically preserved “family” (this word is used throughout, presumably to encourage a sci-fi illiterate audience’s investment in this universe) in the missiles he developed for Khan, so as to protect them from Marcus. Which seems like a bafflingly dangerous ploy. As I heard him tell it, Marcus found out. Which would give Marcus leverage over Khan surely? So, were the opening events in fact a False Flag operation instigated by Marcus, whereby a fake terrorist puts the blame on the Klingons and so starts a war? That’s certainly the kind of thing you might expect from Orci (if that is his outlook on global events), and at least one could read into that a semi-coherent subtext regarding his take on a covert US agenda.

But it means that Khan didn’t tell Kirk the truth (so how is the audience expected to piece it all together?) If Marcus is blackmailing Khan, that would explain him teleporting to Kronos (the Klingon world); it’s a lure to get the Enterprise to open fire on the planet and so initiate war. But if Kirk had followed orders Khan would be dead, so why would someone so super-intelligent put himself in that situation? The 72 missiles aboard the Enterprise appear to be a trigger for Khan to ally with the Enterprise (briefly), in which case it must have come as a surprise to him that his fellows were to be killed by Marcus (but why, what did he expect Marcus to do with the missiles?) Alternatively, Khan went AWOL and started blowing shit up with the goal of revenge on Marcus. In which case, why would Marcus have kept his super race alive (if, as we are told, he knew about them residing in the missiles)? One can almost picture Orci, so obsessed with the idea that he’s injected a scathing indictment of his country into a mainstream movie, missing the wood for the trees and forgetting to ensure that it makes any sense. It certainly won’t help his “cause” if he can’t spell out his thoughts.

This murkiness might not be quite so damaging, or justify quite so much comment, if other crucial plot points didn’t continue this lack of care and coherence. Crucially, when comparing the two Abram Treks, the holes in XI's internal logic don’t square up to the viewer and beg to be mocked. The biggest one here is the curative nature of Khan’s blood. I mentioned I thought Kirk’s death worked surprisingly well, when on paper it is far too schematic an inversion of Wrath of Khan to pack a wallop. But what immediately follows it is guilty of exactly the banal copying tactics that needed to be avoided. Poor Quinto is saddled with a ridiculous roar of “KHANNNN!” designed to mimic Kirk in Trek II but coming across more like Darth Vader’s “NOOOOOOO!” in Revenge of the Sith. He can’t be blamed looking like a prize turkey, as any self-respecting writer would have steered clear of this (look at all the spoofs of the original scene, Seinfeld included), let alone ones who are Trek fans. And the climactic fisticuffs atop speeding flying vehicles are not just an anti-climax after the grandiose space battles but a tiresomely predictable sequence that we’ve been subjected to many times before.

The point of the dust-up is to take Khan alive. He’s needed to bring Kirk back to life (McCoy discovers this because he’s gone all mad scientist for no apparent reason and injected a dead Tribble full of the stuff; just for shits and giggles – you know what these medical professionals are like). We saw what an amazing restorative his blood is in an early scene, as the daughter of Mickey from Doctor Who is saved from certain expiration. As many in the audience appear to have instantly concluded, all McCoy had to do was take some blood from one of the 72 other super beings on board the ship. Presto. Yes, Khan needed sorting out, but Spock was doing that anyway. I do wonder if this wasn’t an issue the writers were conscious of but someone pushed for more dramatic weight behind the confrontation (if so, J. J., you’ve got egg on your face).

Quite aside from this, the ability to now conquer death with Extract of Khan invites an extraordinary rosy outlook for the 25^th century. One presumes the serum will be rewritten as unstable and with no sustainable value, despite Khan’s blood working on two disparate species. The number of sloppy plot points just stack up.

I don’t necessarily take a “deal breaker” attitude to such failings. And clearly, neither do many who extol the virtues of more artistically feted movies (Looper’s a good example, packed with lapses in internal logic but roundly praised). But Orci, Kurtzman and Lindelof had three years to come up with a new adventure and iron out the wrinkles. For some reason they just don't seem to have cared, and Abrams's energetic direction can only mask so much.

As mentioned, his work is consistently thrilling. But he’s also just raking over the coals. There’s a slight air of fatigue, without the freshness and vigour of his first stint. Look, it’s Kirk flying through the air (or space) again. Look, there blows the Enterprise (with added gravity loss) again. Even when Kirk is fixing the ship’s drive by jumping up and down on something (such technical knowhow), Abrams just about convinces you this is what’s needed.  But an encounter with Klingons proves decidedly lacklustre, even with Khan’s convincing takedown tactics. And the new Klingons look rather poor; TV-standard prosthetics, balder and with added piercings. Having Spock do a Jesus Christ pose in the volcano scene is a bit OTT too.

Nevertheless, many of the key elements continue to work extremely well. Pine and Quinto have made Kirk and Spock theirs; no mean feat. Bruce Greenwood’s Pike will be sorely missed. His death scene has none of the easy emotion of Kirk’s, and the reboot has lost a much-needed adult character capable of injecting gravitas into the proceedings.

Karl Urban is plain great, perhaps most successful at transferring the temperament of an old series character. His motivations are less well sketched however. Zoe Saladana’s Uhura eats up some of the traditional McCoy screen time but perversely to little advantage as she is identified by her relationship with Spock, not as an independent character.  John Cho and Anton Yelchin are a bit undernourished. Unfortunately Pegg (serving up a bigger part for the film geek pal?) has much more screen time, and he’s still glaringly miscast as Scotty. His Jar Jar midget friend turns up too, but at least it keeps silent.

Alice Eve does great underwear, but has an otherwise thankless role. As noted, Cumberhatch makes much more of his part than there is on paper; he's as impressive as ever, but his character's backstory is chugged over with disappointing brevity. It's further illustrative of a general disdain for the series trademark philosophical ruminations at the expense of getting on to the next breathlessly explosive sequence.

This is very much a case of the enjoyment of a film in many departments making its failures all-the-more frustrating; if that weren’t the case, I would have been more concisely dismissive. Most of all, the resounding feeling is of pissing away all the positivity they created last time out by abjectly resting on their laurels. As the film began, I was conscious of how Michael Giacchino’s score is the Star Trek theme for this incarnation. But I didn’t think that familiarity would extend throughout, and that it would become so unadventurous so quickly.

Although he’s the one who salvages the film from its weak script, Abrams should really have said “Thanks, but no thanks” when asked to return. He has nothing new to give to Star Trek. Now he’s departed to mess about with Star Wars, on a superficial level they should really rethink the series' colour palate. Something a bit more vibrant, less bleached out. A bit more ‘60s. The lens flares need to go. And they'll need to make the films a bit more regularly (what are they going to do, have two adventures during the whole five-year mission?) But, most of all, they need to have the confidence to tell new stories, seek out new villains and leave Earth behind. So, ditch the writers too then. Just retain the cast, basically. Except for Pegg.

***1/2

He’s from France.

Godzilla

(1998)

Critics and audiences roundly trounced Roland Emmerich and his then writing/producing partner Dean Devlin for their follow-up to Independence Day, but I never really got what was supposed to be so terrible about it. It’s a competently made monster movie. Sure, they’ve given him a curious redesign (as if they wanted their lizard to give off a gumby vibe of not being that bright really, and with a strangely humanoid gait to enable him to run really fast). And they’ve shifted the focus away from the monster while constructing every plot beat according the Spielberg Handbook for the Devoid of Inspiration. But it’s no worse than Independence Day, surely?

Well, it’s certainly no dumber. And it displays either a sense of humour about the perceived artistic failings the duo are guilty of or a bit of spiteful payback, depending on your perception (given Emmerich’s movie legacy, I find it hard to believe he lacks an extremely well-developed funny bone); the mayor and his assistant are named after critics Siskel and Ebert, who eviscerated their previous pictures. And they stuff the film with in-jokes and references (just one instance; Broderick’s character listens to Danken Schoen in the lift, the tune he performs karaoke to in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). And the glee with which the director destroys American landmarks is infectious; it’s especially amusing, as he never seems to tire of such obliteration. That said, it’s curious to behold the mass destruction of New York in a post 9/11 environment.

But the displeasure that greeted Godzilla must have been partly down to the filmmakers’ lack of reverence for the titular character. Who knows if original writers Ted Elliot and Terry Rosio (the Pirates of the Caribbean movies) were more respectful since, although they received a credit, Devlin and Emmerich reportedly started from scratch. Much like J. J. Abrams and Star Trek, the director is said to have not much liked the original. In that sense, Abrams got lucky with the response to his divergence from lore. I have to admit, I’m sympathetic with Emmerich. I can’t see what the big deal with monster movies is past the age of seven anyway. Apart from anything, how do you crack the nut of making them work plot-wise? Peter Jackson certainly came a cropper with King Kong. And all Abrams and co did with Cloverfield was to redo Emmerich’s Godzilla with a found footage gimmick and added nastiness.  There’s a vague attempt to show a bit of sympathy for the beast at the end, and they make him out to have a fair bit of grey matter, but mainly he’s just a giant scaly wrecking ball. Pacific Rim is the latest to tackle big monsters (with big robots to boot); it will be interesting to see how it fares, not least in terms of whether the story goes anywhere interesting.

Emmerich and Devlin’s solution to plot problems is to take the formulaic approach. They copy Spielberg. There are numerous shout-outs to Jaws and Jurassic Park here, even to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (the stranded shipwreck in an early scene). The old man fishing on the pier is a comedy riff on the shark movie, of course. As is the mayor’s denial of the dangers of the monster. Meanwhile, rain-drenched New York is a direct steal from the sodden breakdown of Jurassic Park. Emmerich isn’t stupid; he saw how much better the T-Rex looked when battered by the elements, so he puts Godzilla in a permanent downpour.  Indeed, Godzilla looks like one of the wettest films ever made to be set on dry land (the cast wore wetsuits throughout – Matthew Broderick unknowingly sported his back-to-front until Hank Azaria set him straight). And, when you see the monster swimming, your mind can’t help but reference the previous year’s aquatic xenomorphs in Alien Resurrection. And what are the baby Godzillas, if not a unsubtle recreation of Jurassic Park’s velociraptors?

It’s difficult to fault Emmerich’s approach to special effects. There’s a reason he pays attention to Spielberg; both are adept at integrating them with the main action, ensuring physicality and suspension of disbelief.  He goes for practical work as often as not (including extensive use of models) and his choices tend to pay off. Although, revisiting the film, it was surprising how extensively he uses back projection (another film “recent” film its use has been very obvious is Aliens).

The duo play lip service to the atomic origins of the monster with a credits sequence showing archive footage of nuclear testing, and then they show Broderick investigating giant earth worms (if only!) at Chernobyl.  But having organised the threat and scale of their monster, I completely get the decision to switch focus to the baby ‘zillas in the latter half of the film. They are able to interact directly with the human cast, and you can see that Emmerich is much more engaged with their dramatic potential than daddy/mummy’s stomping round the streets of the Big Apple. Basically we see a stir-and-repeat of the climax of Jurassic Park, with more cheesy jokes. Ironically it’s easily the best section of the movie, and it also yields the bigges laugh (Broderick’s lift scene).

The assembled cast includes some curious and offbeat choices. Broderick makes an affable lead, coming on in Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws mode as the dedicated boffin. Jean Reno is endlessly watchable no matter what he does, and sportingly takes a role that blames the French (not America; it’s lily-white!) for nuclear testing run amok. Azaria brings an appealing comic sensibility, while Maria Pitillo is cute but lacks presence. It doesn’t help that she is foisted with an unsympathetic character; it seems that the reward for dumping your boyfriend in favour of your career, then screwing him over for a big break, is that you get promoted and he readily takes you back. Michael Lerner’s enjoyably bombastic as the mayor, while Kevin Dunn adds colonel to his CV.

David Arnold’s score isn’t all that; it’s as formulaic as the plot and character beats. But Godzilla’s greatest sin is that it’s called Godzilla; it isn’t a truly lousy film. Really, the Golden Razzie nominations seem like hyperbole based on fan response, rather than reflecting a big pile of crap. But then, I admit, I don’t think I’ve seen a Roland Emmerich movie that hasn’t entertained me. I haven’t seen one that’s very good either, of course.

Godzilla was expected to be the biggest movie of 1998, but it only came in ninth in US. Worldwide, it was third, which suggest popular perception of its failure is not the whole story. Nevertheless, on a cost vs profit scale this was no monster smash. Like the Planet of the Apes reboot, this was one where fan indignation outweighed reasonable box office returns. I suspect that if there had been plaudits all round follow-ups to both would have been forthcoming. In Godzilla’s case there were plans for two sequels. Godzilla reboots in 2014…

*** 

My dear, sweet brother Numsie!

The Golden Child

(1986)

Post-Beverly Hills Cop, Eddie Murphy could have filmed himself washing the dishes and it would have been a huge hit. Which might not have been a bad idea, since he chose to make this misconceived stinker.

The 1980s may have been the actor’s peak period as a star, but it also yielded many of his weakest movies. Only Coming to America holds up out of his pictures in the last half of the decade, and that’s no classic.  The first question that comes to mind with The Golden Child is why on earth Murphy went near it. The chance to broaden his appeal by making a PG-13 movie? But why would you neuter the cheerful vulgarity that is the key to your appeal? Shorn of his trademark crudity, a buttoned-down Murphy must coast on charisma and that laugh of his. There aren’t many guffaws for the audience, though. When you learn that this was conceived as a straight drama set to star Mel Gibson, and then reworked as an ill-fitting comedy for Murphy, things begin to make more sense. Tonally, it feels all wrong for a family movie, with missing teenagers turning up dead and child sacrifice.

Murphy completely fails to convince as a social worker. He is appropriately unlikely as the Chosen One, prophesised to protect the titular child (who is the saviour of mankind). Dastardly Charles Dance has abducted and plans to kill him, don’t you know. Dance is suitably satanic, but his rent-a-British-villain act is much more fun in Last Action Hero.

I guess this might have worked, with a different director and a better script. And decent special effects and a change of star. Actually, probably not. John Carpenter was originally attached to direct, so he dodged a bullet when he chose to make the wonderful Big Trouble in Little China instead (which bombed at the box office but was also replete with Chinese mysticism). Curiously, both films share several cast members; James Hong, Victor Wong and Peter Kwong.

Michael Ritchie came onboard, an erratic director who was responsible for the effective political satire The Candidate during the ‘70s but increasingly settled into a pattern of making broad comedies with dubious production values (1980’s The Island is an exception and something of an oddity, with Michael Caine menaced by modern day pirates).  He gave Chevy Chase had a big hit with Fletch the previous year, and his first of two 1986 releases was the modestly successful Goldie Hawn American football comedy Wildcats. Both of those look like finely honed masterpieces compared to the shoddy work here. The pacing is poor, the action clumsy, the score intrusively tone deaf (Michel Colombier replaced John Barry; presumably the latter’s work was too good for a film of this crappy), the special effects lousy (and really poorly integrated). It looks consistently cheap and tacky, with garish lighting, sets that look like sets, and ludicrously over-used dry ice. In addition, the treatment of Charlotte Lewis is shamelessly sexist in the way only really trashy ‘80s movies can be; at one point she is drenched with water and spends the rest of the scene cavorting in a see-through wet t-shirt.

Murphy occasionally ekes out a chuckle or two, addressing Dance’s Sardo Numspa as Brother Numsie. There’s also a half-decent dream sequence. But the funniest moments are all Wong’s. He looks like he’s having a great time as a vulgar priest, belching away and picking his nose. But there is precious little inspired lunacy on display, and there are very few thrills. Instead, a pervading unpleasant undertone informs the proceedings. Perhaps Murphy was looking for a supernatural hit to rival Ghostbusters (Dan Aykroyd wrote Winston with Murphy in mind); what he got may have been one of the top ten films of 1986, but in every other respect it’s a failure.

*1/2