The Golden Child – 2 out of 5
I remember seeing bits and pieces of The Golden Child when I was a less-golden child (I was more of a pyrite child than anything remotely gold) and I don’t remember much beyond the basics of the story, the fact it starred Eddie Murphy and some awkward special effects. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen it in its entirety when I was a child and I know I never bothered to watch it when the 90s hit and from then on. For some reason, the film popped in my head recently so I decided to finally watch this one from beginning to end and…well…it’s about as awkward as the film’s special effects.
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| Even though I scored this one low, I sure did enjoy this part. Eddie Murphy scratching the prayer wheel like a record was a shining diamond in this otherwise rough movie. |
A young boy with mystical abilities from Tibet called the Golden Child (J.L. Reate) is kidnapped by a villainous man named Sardo Numspa (Charles Dance) and he hopes to turn the child to evil. A young woman named Kee Nang (Charlotte Lewis) teams with a reluctant private detective Chandler Jarrell (Murphy) in hopes of rescuing the boy and stopping Numspa and his henchmen. Initially skeptic of the boy’s abilities and the fact he is considered the “chosen one” to find the boy, Jarrell soon learns that all isn’t what it seems and his journey soon opens him up to the world of the mystic and the darkness that can lurk within it.
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| The child isn't golden?!? This is blatant false advertising! |
To put it bluntly, The Golden Child is a very odd film. Essentially, it is supposed to be a comedy with some mysticism and fantasy elements thrown in but it never really feels like it accomplishes this in any form. The mystic side of things never really felt that interesting and the comedy always felt forced. It’s clear that Murphy is doing what he can with the product that was given to him and there are some genuinely amusing moments but most of the humor falls very flat. Never mind that some of the material hasn’t aged very well and is a tad on the cringe-y side in 2019 but mostly the issue stems from the fact the fantasy tone and the comedy tone just doesn’t blend together very well and it makes for a product that doesn’t gel or have much of a flow to it.
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| Even Charles Dance's usual chilly but captivating presence wasn't enough to aid this film. |
Another element that really hurt the flow of this film for me is the plot feels very disjointed. The story goes from moment to moment in a linear fashion but always feels like it jumped over a minor scene. The plot is never confusing and I was never lost when it came to what was occurring but the story always had a feeling like there was a scene that was deleted that might have had some minor importance or could have made the whole thing move in a more fluid manner...or at the very least, develop some matters in a better way.
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| It's nice to see that Toad from the X-Men universe was getting work as an actor in the 80s. |
The Golden Child has no shortage of weak elements and very few redeeming elements. One of the smaller portions of the product that was a bit strange to me was the henchmen of Sardo Numspa (played by Randall “Tex” Cobb and Pons Maar). They seem to be comic relief in a way but also come off very strangely that I couldn’t quite tell if they were supposed to be eccentric or funny. This once again plays to the feeling that the film always feels like it is missing scenes as their establishment does little to truly capture who and what they are intended to be. Finally, as I stated earlier, the special effects in this film are super awkward.
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| You can hide all you want, Tex, but you can't hide this one on your IMDb credits. |
I know some people reminisce fondly with practical effects and hate on computer generated ones but, realistically, all effects can be bad if done poorly. I don’t hold one over the other because great practical effects can be magical and great computer effects can be awesome but bad ones in either category are hard to sit through. In 1986, it was possible for practical effects to look amazing and there are a lot of films from this decade and even decades before and after that relied on practical effects that still hold up today. The Golden Child isn’t one of them. There are some decent moments of stop-motion effects that look good and are functional but there are some that look so bad I was questioning why production decided to attempt them in the first place. Thankfully, despite the fact the feature is a fantasy, there isn’t a ton of special effects and these moments are spaced out through the story.
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| I know there are some people who really, really, REALLY hate CG but sometimes we forget, due to nostalgia being a toxic impulse, just how bad the old effects sometimes got. |
Although I’ve already said I can’t think of a better way to sum up The Golden Child than awkward. The comedy never hits very well, the whole story feels off and the special effects are pretty weak even by the standards set in the 80s. If I had watched this in my formative years there is probably a chance that nostalgia would tint my lenses of which I view this movie rose colored but since I never watched this in its entirety and only have seen in in my late 30s the whole experience was just blah for me.
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