The Golden Child

There are a lot of moments to remember in The Golden Child, but the one I will treasure the longest happens when Eddie Murphy gets behind the wheel of a beat-up station wagon and is led by a sacred parakeet to the lair of the devil. Read full review

A non-movie that seems to wash over audiences without making any kind of impression. Except for those it does impress. Read full review

After his triumphant Beverly Hills Cop, Eddie Murphy could have done anything. Why, then, did he choose to head for the mysterious Orient to make a film as rich in mumbo jumbo as The Golden Child? Mr. Murphy's comic skepticism in the face of all this is the film's greatest asset. But it is worn thin by the awareness that not even he seems able to take the adventure seriously, and by the preposterousness and inconsistency of what surrounds him. Read full review

As in Big Trouble, there is much playing around with oriental mythic nonsense: underground caverns, magic daggers, even a trip to Tibet. But where the movie really misses a trick is its inability to reproduce the balletic splendours of martial arts. The surprise is Murphy, who relies more on his undoubted charm than on the stream of wisecracks he usually delivers. Read full review

It's not awful; it isn't dull. But The Golden Child is a kids' film, and there are times when Murphy himself seems uncomfortable, as if he knows he's making a movie he wouldn't pay to see. [13 Dec 1986, p.B1]

A strange hybrid of Far Eastern mysticism, treacly sentimentality, diluted reworkings of Eddie Murphy’s patented confrontation scenes across racial and cultural boundaries, and dragged-in ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) special effects monsters, film makes no sense on any level. Read full review

The action sequences are cloddishly orchestrated. And for the most part, the movie simply doesn't make sense. Read full review

The Golden Child is certainly not a Michael Ritchie movie - the talented director of Smile and The Candidate is never more than a referee in the war between the special effects and the star. The special effects win, which is no victory, but the star is not knocked out. [13 Dec 1986, p.F5]

A weirdly out-of-scale movie that constantly juxtaposes the trivial and the cosmic, less to comic effect than to a mounting sense of muddle and uncertainty. Read full review

Toying with themes too serious for it and stars too big for it, this fantasy is incalculably less than the sum of it's parts. Read full review

Eddie Murphy's latest is a flabby disappointment. The jokes die, the action curdles. Much of it falls as flat as smashed tinsel. Read full review

Though an expensive production, padded out with special effects and side- trips to Nepal, it fails to achieve any grandeur or dash. Murphy seems to be present mainly to mock the film's pretentions and shoddy plotting, as if the producers deliberately had chosen a piece of third-rate pulp, pumped millions of dollars into it, and then brought in Murphy to make them look stupid. [22 Dec 1986, p.75]