The Golden Child is a 1986 American dark fantasy action comedy film directed by Michael Ritchie. The film stars Eddie Murphy as Chandler Jarrell, a Los Angeles social worker who is informed that he is "The Chosen One", and is destined to save "The Golden Child", a kidnapped Tibetan boy with mystical powers who is said to be the savior of all humankind. Alongside Murphy, the film's cast includes Charlotte Lewis and Charles Dance.
The Golden Child was produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures It attracted Hollywood's attention and after a bidding war Paramount Pictures purchased the script for $330,000. Feldman had intended it to be a detective story rather than a comedy and thought of Mel Gibson for the lead role. Murphy met with George Miller to direct the film.
J. L. Reate, the actor who played the Golden Child, the male titular character, was actually a girl: Jasmine Lauren Reate, who was six years old when filming began. This was her only theatrical performance, but she wound up in the movie industry anyway: as of 2019, Reate was executive director of events at the Toronto Film Festival.
For special effects, the team used CGI, as well as traditional stop motion and go motion.
Music
Score
Alan Silvestri (Back to the Future) was originally sought to provide the film's score, but turned the project down. Paramount then turned to John Barry, who had just come off his award-winning score for Out of Africa. Barry composed a score for the film. However, during post-production, Barry also left the project, when both differences with the producers and test screening feedback presented considerable challenges for the composer. It earned US$79,817,937 in the United States alone, making it the eighth biggest film of the year. "My pictures make their money back," Eddie Murphy remarked in 1989. "No matter how I feel, for instance, about The Golden Child – which was a piece of shit – the movie made more than $100 million. So who am I to say it sucks?" After The Golden Child, Murphy would participate in the writing of many of his films.
Despite its commercial success, the film did not meet Paramount's expectations when compared to Murphy's previous film, Beverly Hills Cop (1984), which grossed $234,760,478 at the US box office.
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 22% based on 27 reviews, with an average rating of 4.3/10. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 37 out of 100, based on reviews from 12 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.
Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three out of four stars, and stated: "The Golden Child may not be the Eddie Murphy movie we were waiting for, but it will do. It is funnier, more assured and more tailored to Murphy than Beverly Hills Cop and it shows a side of his comic persona that I don't think has been much appreciated: his essential underlying sweetness. Murphy's comedy is not based on hurt and aggression, but on affection and an understanding that comes from seeing right through the other characters."
In his TV Movies and Video Guide, Leonard Maltin cited the film as a BOMB (his lowest possible rating): "A top candidate for the worst megahit of all time...Charlotte Lewis gives a wooden performance even for an ex-model; entire reels go by with hardly a chuckle. A box-office smash - but have you ever met anyone who says they liked it?" Janet Maslin of The New York Times seemed to agree, describing the picture as a "comedy without laughs".
Writer Dennis Feldman was disappointed with the film and thought they should have taken the script more seriously "but instead, everybody wanted to make an Eddie Murphy comedy" and was critical of director Michael Ritchie "it's not what the director should have done—and he didn't even do it that well, either."