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.
