The Golden Child ** (1986, Eddie Murphy, Charles Dance, Charlotte Lewis) – Classic Movie Review 13,105

Michael Ritchie’s slack 1986 American fantasy action comedy film The Golden Child stars Eddie Murphy, who said: ‘The movie made more than $100 million, so who am I to say it sucks?’

Director Michael Ritchie’s slack 1986 Paramount Pictures American fantasy action comedy film The Golden Child stars Eddie Murphy, Charles Dance and Charlotte Lewis, along with Victor Wong, Randall ‘Tex’ Cobb and James Hong.

Mix together wisecracking Murphy, the martial arts movie and Hollywood comic thriller and you get this mushy chop suey.

Murphy plays a Los Angeles social-worker called Chandler Jarrell, who is told he is The Chosen One destined to save The Golden Child, a kidnapped Tibetan boy with mystical powers. He is contacted by wily Oriental ancients to recover The Golden Child (J L Reate), the saviour of all humankind who can restore good into the world, but is being held by a fearsome black magician villain named Sardo Numspa (Charles Dance).

The stars make admirable combatants, but Dennis Feldman’s script is soppy, Ritchie’s direction is sloppy, and the shaky-looking effects are just plain silly. Oddly, as it is a comedy, there is a distinct lack of laughs.

However Murphy’s star power in 1986 made it one of the year’s top hits. On a cost estimated at $12 million, it earned $79,817,937 in the US, making it the eighth biggest film of the year, and went on to a total of $149.4 million worldwide. However, Paramount still weren’t happy, hoping for a repeat of Murphy’s previous film, Beverly Hills Cop (1984), which grossed $234,760,478 at the US box office.

Murphy said in 1989: ‘My pictures make their money back. No matter how I feel, for instance, about The Golden Child – which was a piece of shit – the movie made more than $100 million. So who am I to say it sucks?’

Charles Dance recalled: “I thought I’d quite like to do a film with Eddie Murphy because he makes me laugh. The character was villainous, but he was a comic villain, and I hadn’t done a film like that before. It was fun. I enjoyed doing it.’

J L Reate, who plays the male Golden Child, is female: Jasmine Lauren Reate, who was seven when filming began on her sole cinema film. As an adult, she entered the film industry, and in 2019 was executive director of events at the Toronto Film Festival.

The special effects team used CGI, traditional stop motion (the stop frame animated filmmaking technique), and go motion, a variation of stop motion animation which incorporates motion blur into each frame involving motion, developed by Industrial Light & Magic and Phil Tippett.

Almost all of John Barry’s original score for the film was dumped in favour of a second, mostly synthpop score by Michel Colombier.

Dennis Feldman, a professional photographer whose only previous writing credit was Just One of the Guys, wrote a script called The Rose of Tibet. His screenplay attracted a bidding war won by Paramount Pictures, who bought the script for $330,000. Feldman had intended it to be ‘a Raymond Chandler movie with supernatural elements’ but the film became a comedy.

The cast are Eddie Murphy as Chandler Jarrell, Charles Dance as Sardo Numspa, Charlotte Lewis as Kee Nang, Victor Wong as Old Goupa, J L Reate as The Golden Child, Randall ‘Tex; Cobb as Til, James Hong as Dr Hong, Shakti Chen as Kala, Tau Logo as Yu, Tiger Chung Lee as Khan, Pons Maar as Fu, Peter Kwong as Tommy Tong, Wally Taylor as Detective Boggs, Eric Douglas as Yellow Dragon, Charles Levin as TV Host, Marilyn Schreffler as the voice of Kala, and Frank Welker as the voice of the Thing and The Dark Lord.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 13,105

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