The Golden Child has a lot going for it: It’s an adventure comedy starring Eddie Murphy with great supporting acts from my favourite baddie Randall ’Tex’ Cobb and Charles Dance, who’s as chilling as always. Too bad it’s the overall lack of vision that makes the movie a letdown; The Golden Child is more than often too childish, but still has a lot of adult themes like graphic kills and sexual innuendo. The effects are extremely bad for a late 80s movie, and for some reason the movie decides to rely very heavily on the towards the end.

Eddie Murphy is his likeable self, but very much just repeats his mischievous character form the Beverly Hills Cop (1984) to play it safe and to please the audience.

The Golden Child mixes tons of good ingredients – and a few bad ones – into a potpourri that ends up being less than the sum of it parts.

80s-o-meter: 90%

Total: 74%