The Golden Child

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]