Directed by: Michael Ritchie
Starring: Eddie Murphy, Victor Wong, Charlotte Lewis, Charles Dance, J.L. Reate
Eddie Murphy has so much fun with the cheerfully ridiculous The Golden Child that he can barely contain himself. He spends the bulk of the movie with a mischievous grin. As in Beverly Hills Cop, The Golden Child, and later Metro, Murphy shows he is not just a brilliant comic actor, but a plausible action hero. Murphy jumps headlong into The Golden Child and makes us care about it a lot more than we should.
Murphy plays Chandler Jarrell, a private detective specializing in finding missing children. One nasty case puts him on the trail of the Golden Child, who was abducted from his palace in Tibet and held captive by evil forces wishing to destroy him. A mysterious young woman named Kee Nang (Lewis) tells Chandler he is "the chosen one" to find and rescue the Golden Child. He doesn't necessarily believe it, but goes along on the journey because there is a child in danger and also because he is attracted to Kee Nang.
Chandler's quest takes him to Tibet, where he must retrieve a special knife to kill the leader of the dark forces Sardo (Dance) and save the child. "Why can't someone ask me to go to the Bahamas?" Chandler not unreasonably asks. The film is more adventure than comedy, but Murphy peppers in some funny liners and refreshingly not one f-bomb. Why The Golden Child manages to work is its spirit. It knows it is ludicrous, Murphy knows it is also, but yet we find ourselves involved while director Ritchie milks Murphy's considerable charm for all it is worth.
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