There was a time where anything Eddie touched turned into money for studios. It is kind of a shock (to some) that after a string of pretty horrible movies, one of which holds a record for losing money (Pluto Nash) that Hollywood really doesn't want a whole lot to do with the guy outside of voice work anymore. However, there was a time that anything Murphy was involved in was guaranteed to make money.

Take The Golden Child, for example. This movie (IMO) is not a great movie. It is a pretty terrible script that if it weren't for the comedic brilliance that was Eddie Murphy in the 80's there is virtually no chance it would succeed. Virtually all critics panned this movie and with good reasons - it isn't good. Even Eddie Murphy is on the record saying The Golden Child was "a piece of S**T."

Only Roger Ebert game it a decent score and he later went on to say that he was incorrect in his original decision.

---

Despite all this negative press (and it was and is, almost entirely negative) people went to the theaters in droves in order to see it. That is how all encompassing Eddie's fame was in the mid-80's.

bonus points for knowing what happened here

That doesn't mean the film is without its high points. This is provided almost entirely by Eddie's comedic genius that I suppose the world grew tired of over the years. I find it is almost exactly the same thing as how the world at first loved Jim Carrey but now is kind of sick of him. I suppose both of these guys can cry all the way to the bank where they keep their 160 million dollars.

The plot of "The Golden Child" is odd at best. A young boy in Tibet has magical powers such as bringing things back to life and making beer cans dance and he is abducted for some reason (it is explained in the film but trust me, it is unimportant) and for some reason Chandler Jarrell (Murphy) is the "chosen one" who must rescue him. As is typical in this very tired plot-line, Jarrell doesn't believe what the messengers are telling him and for 80% of the movie he doesn't take his role in the mission seriously. This puts him in all sorts of bizarre predicaments in environments he is uncomfortable with (such as visiting temples in Tibet) only to see him whisked back to the United States because that is where the kidnappers decided to bring the "Golden Child" for some reason or another.

The movie stays entertaining only because of Murphy. The plot is dumb, the characters for the most part are also pretty bad and even though it was 1986 and our expectations were pretty low, the sequences that involved the extremely rudimentary CGI that existed at the time are not terribly impressive and even looked fake back then. Maybe I am expecting too much.

Perhaps I am being overly harsh but this film is basically Beverly Hills Cop with magical powers instead of drug-smuggling gangsters. I mean, even the soundtrack sounds interchangeable between the two movies. While there are a few iconic scenes that anyone who has seen it before will definitely remember, overall this one is easy to skip.

Overall this film (in my mind) embodies how valuable Eddie Murphy was as a star back then and how it really didn't matter how bad the script and screenplay were, his movies were ALWAYS going to make money. However, it really is not a good movie, and gets really boring really fast.

4 / 10