Movie Review: The Golden Child (1986)

Genre: Fantasy Adventure  
Director: Michael Ritchie  
Starring: Eddie Murphy, Charles Dance, Charlotte Lewis, Victor Wong  

Running Time: 94 minutes  

Synopsis: In Tibet, satanic forces commanded by Sardo Numspa (Charles Dance) kidnap the Golden Child, who possesses magical powers and is the long awaited savior of humanity. In Los Angeles, Kee Nang (Charlotte Lewis) locates professional child finder Chandler Jarrell (Eddie Murphy) and informs him that he is the Chosen One tasked with rescuing the Golden Child. Although deeply skeptical, Chandler is drawn into the web of mystery and magic, setting up a confrontation with Sardo.
 

What Works Well: Charles Dance successfully dominates his scenes as the personification of evil. The relatively short running time ensures the action is efficiently hustled along with sustained energy, and although mostly silent, young J.L. Reate is endearing as the Golden Child.

What Does Not Work As Well: Eddie Murphy's brand of improvised and foul-mouthed contemporary humour never settles within a milieu of ancient cultures and cryptic beliefs. The script artificially force-feeds urban edginess and sarcasm into a grand story of good versus evil, leaving director Michael Ritchie flailing in search of narrative coherence. Most of the humour falls flat and serves to emphasize American obtuseness towards other cultures, while the generic synth music is just as contextually oblivious. The unconvincing romance fares no better, with Charlotte Lewis as Kee Nang having no business falling in love with Murphy's Chandler. 

Key Quote:

Chandler: The Chosen One. I'm the Chosen One. Why? Tibet? Why can't somebody choose me to go to the Bahamas? I got to get chosen to go to Tibet.

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Movie Review: You People (2023)

Genre: Satirical Romantic Comedy

Director: Kenya Barris

Starring: Jonah Hill, Lauren London, Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Running Time: 118 Minutes

Synopsis: In Los Angeles, 35-year-old Ezra (Jonah Hill) falls in love with Amira (Lauren London). He is white and Jewish, she is black and Muslim. They quickly make plans to get married, but Ezra's mother Shelley (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) tries too hard to be liberal in front of her future daughter-in-law, and Amira's father Akbar (Eddie Murphy) is determined to persuade Ezra he is unfit to marry into black culture.

What Works Well: The cast is talented and willing, with Eddie Murphy (arrogant passive-aggressiveness) and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (socially and culturally hyper-clueless) leaning hard into their roles. A few jokes and humorous moments do land, including the culmination of a dinner-from-hell.

What Does Not Work As Well: Star Jonah Hill and director Kenya Barris co-wrote the script, and they veer too far into a bizarre - and quickly tiresome - world where race and religion are the only topics of often vulgar conversation. Meanwhile, the romantic elements are tepid at best. Plenty of dialogue appears improvised and undisciplined, and needless to say, the final resolution is bland enough to negate everything that preceded it. The content does not come close to justifying 118 minutes of running time.

Conclusion: An attempt to satirize the overheated culture wars predictably flounders.

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Movie Review: Dreamgirls (2006)

A musical drama, Dreamgirls is a glitzy rags to riches story infused with powerful singing and overheated passions.

In Detroit of the 1960s, car dealer and part-time music promoter Curtis Taylor (Jamie Foxx) spots energetic amateur trio The Dreamettes, consisting of temperamental lead singer Effie (Jennifer Hudson), patient Deena (Beyoncé Knowles), and good-natured Lorrell (Anika Noni Rose). They perform music written by Effie's talented brother C.C. (Keith Robinson). Curtis signs the trio as background vocalists for soul star and rampant womanizer Jimmy "Thunder" Early (Eddie Murphy).

Curtis is eager to develop new sounds and grow the group's appeal with white audiences. He changes their name to the Dreams and turns them into headliners. He also designates Deena as the lead, much to Effie's disappointment. The group achieves huge success into the 1970s, with Deena and Curtis becoming a power couple and Lorrell maintaining a long-term relationship with Early. But Effie cannot accept her back-up role, and internal divisions threaten to tear the group apart.

An adaptation of the hit Broadway musical by Henry Krieger (music) and Tom Eyen (lyrics), Dreamgirls is unofficially but obviously based on the story of The Supremes, Diana Ross, and Motown Records. Written and directed by Bill Condon, the movie struts with confidence stemming from the close-to-real-life grand drama, and sparkles with colour, costumes, hairdos, and stage lights for a mostly exhilarating 130 minutes.

Tracing the formation and breakthrough of The Dreams up to Effie's departure, the first half is by far the stronger part of the film. The drive to success carries the scrappy but unified energy of underdogs taking on the music world, powered by the group's innocent nothing-to-lose ambition and Curtis' more machiavellian vision.

In contrast, the second half fragments into separate and less compelling narratives, the major characters navigating different trajectories. Effie struggles to rediscover herself; Jimmy Early spirals towards the industry's scrapheap, his love life competing with his career for wreckage awards; Curtis and Deena are wealthy beyond their dreams but also increasingly miserable, his attempts to turn her into a movie star a stuck-in-place sideshow. Happily, most of the threads are gathered up in time for the rousing final show. 

The cast finds a pleasing balance between acting and singing talent, with Eddie Murphy a standout presence. Jennifer Hudson's committed singing sometimes crosses over into barely controlled shouting, but overall the performance numbers, while numerous, are kept reasonably short. Jamie Foxx provides a business-focused anchor, and the cast also includes Danny Glover as Early's old-fashioned first manager. 

Dreamgirls is a dream-big-but-beware-the-pitfalls story, familiar for sure but attractively mounted with an abundance of glamour and glitter.

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Movie Review: Daddy Day Care (2003)

A family-friendly comedy, Daddy Day Care finds and maintains a pleasantly amusing tone.

Charlie (Eddie Murphy) and his friend Phil (Jeff Garlin) are laid off from their jobs at a marketing firm. Charlie's wife Kim (Regina King) returns to work and he is left to care for their four-year-old son Ben, as the family can no longer afford the expensive Chapman Academy daycare run by the imperious Miss Harridan (Anjelica Huston).

Charlie and Phil spot a business opportunity and open the value-priced Daddy Day Care business in Charlie's house. At first the two fathers are overwhelmed looking after a gaggle of kids. Gradually they gain a handle on the business, find success, and expand by hiring a third teacher, Star Trek fan Marvin (Steve Zahn). Miss Harridan perceives a threat and lets loose child services inspector Dan Kubitz (Jonathan Katz) to try and shut down the upstart day care.

Directed by Steve Carr, Daddy Day Care is a sometimes funny and always harmless piece of family entertainment. Tapping into several middle class societal themes of the day, including corporate layoffs, a scarcity of jobs, parental angst to get a jump on child education, and difficulties in finding adequate daycare spaces, the film rides Eddie Murphy's star power towards laughs with heart.

And Murphy is in fine form, allowing his softer persona to shine through as a driven dad forced to transition into a new role and finding a previously unimagined level of contentment in being close to both his son and other children. The sharp one-liners and acerbic wit are still here, but toned down for a family audience and stripped of their urban ghetto edge.

Miss Harridan is the villain of the piece, the ultimate smug disciplinarian with a tense smile that fools no one. Anjelica Huston enjoys the role and her stuck-up mannerisms contrast well with Murphy's easy sense of cool.

Carr keeps the mood light, and with a dozen kids blazing around a suburban house, it's easy to keep the energy high and the gags coming. A few of the children (including a young Elle Fanning) and their parents are provided with rudimentary personality definitions, but Daddy Day Care does not try to take itself seriously enough to care too deeply about individuals. Rather, the ultra bureaucratic Mr. Kubitz and Sci-Fi fan Marvin are trotted out to add to the sense of wacky merriment.

Unpretentious but effective, Daddy Day Care earns the participation ribbon.

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Movie Review: Trading Places (1983)

A social comedy set in the world of business, Trading Places is an early vehicle for Eddie Murphy's burgeoning talents and an entertaining romp through the lineage versus social environment debate.

In Philadelphia, filthy rich and racist brothers Randolph and Mortimer Duke (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche) own a large commodities trading firm. To settle a bet about nature versus nurture, they decide to ruin the life of their firm's haughty general manager Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) while elevating streetwise bum Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) into his role. Valentine is bailed out of jail, installed in Winthorpe's swanky apartment, scrubbed down, provided with the services of butler Coleman (Denholm Elliott), and given free reign to run the firm.

Meanwhile, Winthorpe is framed for petty theft and drug trafficking, locked out of his apartment and has his accounts frozen. His fiancée Penelope (Kristin Holby) dumps him and he falls in with prostitute Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis), the only person to believe his story. Billy Ray thrives in his new environment while a desperate Winthorpe starts contemplating a life of crime. But once the two men learn of the Duke brothers' chicanery, they join forces and plot to turn the tables.

Directed by John Landis as a loose modernization of Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper, Trading Places followed 48 Hrs. to help launch Eddie Murphy into superstardom. The film enjoys plenty of laughs, foul language and a deep cast, while the Duke brothers enliven the villainy meter and present a boo-worthy representation of the worst that the 1 percent have to offer.

Murphy lets loose and dominates the film, easily upstaging the top-billed Aykroyd. The character of Billy Ray Valentine may be altogether implausible as a rough diamond too easy to polish from street bum to corporate suit, but Murphy makes the most of it, his motormouth and quick-witted presence overcoming any character gaps.

Trading Places is at its best in the scenes catapulting Billy Ray from a prison cell to the corner office, while Winthorpe is simultaneously drop-kicked from a cushy upper crust life to a prostitute's derelict apartment. The Dukes play the role of hidden puppet masters and dramatically change two unsuspecting lives, creating plenty of room for comedy. Billy Ray can't hide his instincts to steal property from his own new palatial home, while Winthorpe's downfall starts with a petty theft set-up at the stuffiest of men's clubs. As Winthorpe nears bottom, Ophelia offers hope that among the downtrodden, there is more and better humanity than within the ranks of back-stabbing crooks in suits.

The final third of the film gets away from Landis and drifts off-topic, leaving the social aspects dangling in search of more adolescent laughs. While the wild train ride featuring Winthorpe, Billy Ray and dirty tricks operative Clarence Beeks (Paul Gleason) is fun, it also has little to do with the premise. And Landis is caught with a climax on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange that may be technically feasible but proves beyond the director's capabilities to explain. Landis settles for not bothering, and is satisfied with a rush to retribution.

Despite moments of sloppiness Trading Places is edgy fun, a glossy rags to riches meets riches to rags laugh fest given extra spark by an emerging comic star.

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Movie review: Beverly Hills Cop (1984)

A cool police comedy, Beverly Hills Cop transformed Eddie Murphy from superstar to global phenomenon. The film is a perfect vehicle for Murphy's brand of comic urban agitation, and the blend of laughs and action is irresistible.

Axel Foley (Murphy) is a Detroit undercover cop who does not mind breaking all the rules in pursuit of bad guys. His old friend Mikey (James Russo), an ex-convict, shows up in town carrying some seemingly stolen government bond certificates. Mikey had been working as a bodyguard at a Beverly Hills warehouse, and seems agitated. Sure enough, a couple of hitmen soon show up and kill Mikey. Against the wishes of his superiors, Axel heads to California in his beat-up car to track down the murderers.

Once in Beverly Hills, Axel connects with art gallery curator Jenny Summers (Lisa Eilbacher), a common friend with Mikey. She in turn directs Axel to the very wealthy gallery benefactor Victor Maitland (Steven Berkoff), who also owns the warehouse where Mikey worked. Axel starts snooping into Maitland's business, which puts him on the radar of local police detectives Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and Taggart (John Ashton) and their Lieutenant Bogomil (Ronny Cox). Axel uncovers a sophisticated smuggling operation run by Maitland and his goons, but bringing the wealthy businessman to justice will be a tough assignment for a Detroit cop out of his jurisdiction.

Produced by the 1980s power duo of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Martin Brest, Beverly Hills Cops is star vehicle for the unstoppable charismatic talent of Eddie Murphy. This is a foul-mouthed police comedy filled with frantic action and polished to a colourful southern California shine, embracing the contrast of an undercover cop from downtrodden inner-city Detroit invading sparkly Beverly Hills and causing comical mayhem on a personal mission to avenge his dead buddy.

While the story is quite standard, it serves as merely a backdrop for Murphy to let loose in a series of memorable set-pieces. Whether talking his way into a succession of off-limits glitzy locations, outsmarting the local cops or penetrating heavily defended warehouses, Axel Foley emerges as a witty, resourceful and hilarious hero, revelling in his transplanted status and happy to bring the best of Detroit's street-wise attitude to the tony environs of Rodeo Drive and its self-loving people.

The Daniel Petrie, Jr. script keeps things simple, playing to the strengths of Murphy by just presenting Axel with a series of asymmetrical challenges and allowing him to turn the tables in the funniest possible way. And the dishevelled cop does it all with a broad smile on his face, except for the numerous occasions when he bursts into his goofy guffaw. Axel manages to laugh at and with his opponents at the same time, keeping them off-balance, as he navigates every occasion with a disarming "who me?" sense of the underdog who couldn't possibly hold the advantage until he very much does, and it's too late for everyone else.

The film's cool vibe is dramatically enhanced by a legendary soundtrack. The Heat Is On by Glenn Frey and Neutron Dance by the Pointer Sisters both became huge hits, while Harold Faltermeyer's electronic instrumental Axel F remains one of the most iconic 1980s music themes.

The supporting actors alternate between standing back to create space for Murphy and stepping forward to present juicy targets. Judge Reinhold and John Ashton fulfill their roles admirably as the by-the-books local cops who initially stand in Axel's way but eventually buy into his methods and mission. Steven Berkoff makes for a worthy adversary, but Lisa Eilbacher gets the most stuck-in-the-eighties role of superfluous female interest struggling against oversized shoulder pads.

Dripping with a winning attitude, Beverly Hills Cop cruises down the glitzy boulevard paved with blinding star power.

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Movie Review: I Spy (2002)

A real stinker of a buddy cop comedy, I Spy is about 20 years behind the times in both premise and execution.

US national security secret agent Alex Scott (Owen Wilson) is meek and hesitant, and resents the superstar status of his colleague Carlos (Gary Cole), who always seems to get the latest and best spy gizmos to play with. Alex's next mission is in Budapest, where he is to connect with beautiful Agent Rachel Wright (Famke Janssen) and recover a missing state of the art "switchblade" stealth military jet. International arms dealer Arnold Gundars (Malcolm McDowell) has stolen the jet and is about to auction it off to the highest bidder.

Meanwhile arrogant world boxing champion Kelly Robinson (Eddie Murphy) easily improves his record to 57-0 and sets up his next title defense in Budapest. Alex's plan is to infiltrate Arnold's swish party by pretending to be part of Kelly's glamourous entourage. The secret agent and the boxer immediately clash and have difficulty working together, but once in Budapest they are forced to cooperate to escape from a continuous stream of trouble.

Directed by Betty Thomas and with up to six different writers having a hand in cobbling together an atrocious script, it is difficult to believe just how lame I Spy is. This is the sort of film that went out of style in the mid-1980s, around the time of efforts such as Spies Like Us (1985). Somehow, the I Spy producers (including 1980s stalwarts Mario Kassar and Hungary's Andrew G. Vajna) believed that warming over stale elements from a bygone era when Murphy was at his prime would pass for entertainment. It does not.

The jokes are not funny, the characters are bland, and the premise is tired. The action scenes are nothing short of excruciating and primarily wallow in the muck of derivation. The relationship between the two men is an awful rehash of countless previous teamings between cop and civilian. The character of Alex Scott is a mix of juvenile and imbecilic, and his childish lusting after Rachel Wright is simply embarrassing. Murphy's motor mouth offers the few moments of relief, but the days when his fresh edge could save a movie are long gone. McDowell and Janssen mail in their performances with insufficient postage to arrive in Budapest.

I Spy with my little eye a pathetic turkey.

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The Movies Of Eddie Murphy

All movies starring Eddie Murphy and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

48 Hrs (1982)

Trading Places (1983)

Beverly Hills Cop (1984)

The Golden Child (1986)

Coming To America (1988)

Bowfinger (1999)

I Spy (2002)

Daddy Day Care (2003)

Dreamgirls (2006)

Tower Heist (2011)

You People (2023)

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Movie Review: Tower Heist (2011)

A rather bland revenge caper comedy thriller, Tower Heist assembles a large cast and then wastes it on an underdeveloped story. There are moments of fun to be had thanks to the star power on display, but the overall package is a disappointment.

In downtown Manhattan, Josh Kovaks (Ben Stiller) is the manager of The Tower, the most prestigious high rise residential address in the city. His crew includes veteran doorman Lester (Stephen Henderson), the tentative desk clerk Charlie (Casey Affleck), housemaid Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe) and rookie elevator operator Enrique (Michael Peña). They all work for General Manager Mr. Simon (Judd Hirsch), looking after every need of the very rich tenants.

The most famous and wealthiest resident is billionaire Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), an investment fund manager who occupies the lavish penthouse, complete with Steve McQueen's bright red Ferrari as a centrepiece decoration. Without warning, Shaw is arrested for stealing $2 billion. Kovaks and his team had all their pension money invested with Shaw, and they lose everything. With FBI agent Claire Denham (Téa Leoni) leading the investigation into Shaw's business dealings, Kovaks assembles his colleagues as well as bankrupt Wall Street investor Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick) and common criminal Slide (Eddie Murphy) to plan a daring theft of Shaw's secret safe, located in a wall enclosure within the penthouse.

Tower Heist has shiny outside packaging, but a listless core. The film looks slick and sounds great, the bass-and-horns theme courtesy of Christophe Beck packing plenty of promise. The talented array of stars do their part to help make the experience half-way watchable. Stiller throws himself into the role and manufactures a decent level of conviction, while Broderick hits the better comic tones with a brooding turn as an investor chewed up and spit out by Wall Street's merciless carousel.

Murphy is in good crude form, recalling the edgy, urban and profane Murphy of old as the one true thief among wannabe crooks, although his scrappy street-level experience is ill-suited to a high-rise heist. Alda (finding his inner Bernie Madoff), Affleck, Peña, Leoni, Sidibe and Hirsch ensure that every corner of the tower is occupied by familiar faces.

With most of the budget invested in the cast and the needlessly complicated backdrop of the Thanksgiving parade, little is left for a decent script, and Tower Heist quickly falls apart. The break-in plan is half-baked to the point of emerging from the oven as a sloppy mess, and the attempts at generating some heat between Josh and Claire misfire, although Leoni sparkles in one scene where the FBI agent disappears behind the fog of alcohol and the woman comes to the fore.

Once director Brett Ratner moves the action to the execution phase, all the tension gets caught up in that red Ferrari, and the film devolves into a single silly gag, over the top, outside the building and beyond the bounds of reason. Tower Heist gets stuck in the elevator, with great company but going nowhere.

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Movie Review: Bowfinger (1999)

A boisterous comedy that surpasses a modest premise, Bowfinger brings out the best from two legendary comedians. Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy team up and deliver the quality chuckles in a story of Hollywood ingenuity on a shoestring.

Producer Bobby Bowfinger (Martin) lives off the scraps that bottom-feeders leave behind. Broke and desperate to manufacture a hit, he latches on to a ludicrous alien invasion script called Chubby Rain by accountant Afrim (Adam Alexi-Malle). Bowfinger uses about $2,000 that he collected as a child to finance the project, and hires illegal migrants as his crew and the straight-off-the-bus Daisy (Heather Graham) as his leading lady.  He also dreams up the idea of surreptitiously filming scenes with action superstar Kit Ramsey (Murphy) and inserting them into the film, thereby creating a star vehicle without having to secure or pay for a star.

Ramsey has an irrational fear of conspiracy theories and alien abduction scenarios, and uses the services of MindHead (a Scientology-like institution) and its head Terry (Terence Stamp) to barely keep his life together. Meanwhile, Bowfinger hires Kit's younger and slower brother Jefferson (also Murphy) to use as a stunt-double. When Bowfinger's actors start hovering around Kit and incomprehensibly interacting with him for the benefit of hidden cameras, Kit's paranoia spirals out of control, but Bowfinger is undeterred in his quest to secure his movie.

Bowfinger clearly defines its targets and squarely hits every one. Making a good movie about the making of a bad movie is not easy, and credit goes to Martin's barbed script, which combines sharp industry satire with broad humour. Director Frank Oz shoots over the shoulder of the fake production, exaggerating with a sharp outline everything in Bowfinger's film that makes cheap productions cheap, from poor acting to rudimentary special effects and unlicensed use of locations.

The character of Bowfinger is ridiculously resourceful, and Martin clearly had a grand time creating a producer who can get things done on next to no budget. From swiping a fashionable jacket to deploying his dog to create scary footstep noises, Bowfinger is never out of ideas on how to get the next scene into the can and Kit Ramsey into his movie without spending a dime. Martin keeps his acting relatively understated, allowing the ingenuity of the character to emerge unhindered by physical histrionics.

Murphy delivers astute comic timing in both his roles. Kit Ramsey is filled with loud bravado but also wracked by the insecurities of an undeservedly wealthy star, and Murphy switches between authoritative and submissive with delightful precision. His performance as Jefferson is even more arresting, the younger brother making up for the lack of intellect with an ever-present smile, even more heart, and wide-eyed enthusiasm for being anywhere near a Hollywood production.

Heather Graham adds to the fun by riffing on her Boogie Nights persona. Daisy treats sex like cold currency, and methodically sleeps her way to better information and better exposure. Even on lousy Bobby Bowfinger productions there are benefits for a starlet to sleep her way to the top, despite the top still being the bottom. Terence Stamp occupies the deep dark centre of MindHead, Martin's script taking the time to aim purposeful jabs at the manufactured nonsense of money-milking psychobabble duping conceited stars while masquerading as religion.

Christine Baranski as a has-been actress trying to reclaim old glories, and Robert Downey Jr. as a successful director occupying a diametrically opposite world to Bowfinger but sitting at the next table, complete the cast.

Bowfinger is bright and breezy, and in less than 100 minutes exposes the other side of movie-making glamour, where the mixture of misplaced ambition and deep-seated desperation creates rich territory for plenty of laughter.

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Movie Review: Coming To America (1988)

A comedy about finding true love, Coming To America fits a familiar story into a shiny comedy package and provides decent laughs, mainly thanks to the comic talents of Eddie Murphy.

A rich man hiding under the rags of poverty to find a woman who would love him without his wealth is a love fable as old as they come. Coming To America distracts from the obvious by injecting its central theme with another ancient plot device, the worlds-apart culture clash. Prince Akeem (Murphy) is the next-in-line to the throne of Zamunda, a fictional African country. Raised in lush luxury at the secluded royal palace, and never having to do anything for himself, Akeem is turning 21 and his parents King Joffe (James Earl Jones) and Queen Aeoleon (Madge Sinclair) have arranged a bride for him to marry.

Unhappy at being pampered throughout his life, Akeem finds the rebel within, refuses to adhere to his parents' wishes, and flies off to America with his personal aid Semmi (Arsenio Hall) to seek the true love of his life. Since they are looking for a future queen, they naturally choose Queens, New York as the place to search for the perfect bride. They rent a dump of an apartment, pretend to be poor, and take jobs as floor cleaners at McDowell's, a fast-food joint operated by Cleo McDowell (John Amos). Cleo's smart and compassionate daughter Lisa (Shari Headley) attracts Akeem's attention and becomes the target of his wooing efforts. Akeem needs to overcome competition from Lisa's egotistical boyfriend Darryl (Eriq La Salle); whining from a home-sick Semmi; and a clumsily desperate attempt at intervention by King Joffe and Queen Aeoleon, before he can win himself a new future queen.

Eddie Murphy wrote the story, and he keeps the laughs coming with welcome good timing and some rather tiresome over-exuberance. He receives good support from Jones, whose booming voice and haughty personality are perfectly suited to the role of a domineering king. In one of his more memorable big-screen roles, Arsenio Hall is also excellent in the role of the side-kick who is too quick to harken for the comforts of home and even quicker to pretend to be Prince when it suits him.

Coming To America does suffer from Murphy always looking more comfortable in New York than the flagrantly artificial dream world of Zamunda, and once Akeem and Semmi settle into New York and the pursuit of Lisa begins, the plot is fixed onto the sturdy rails of predictability all the way through to the sugary ending. Director John Landis has the easy task of keeping his cameras pointing in the right direction, and allowing his star to do his thing.

Coming To America is a vehicle for Murphy at his peak: it lacks the freshness of unpredictability or any sort of edge, but nevertheless works as a showcase for his sterling talent.

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Movie Review: 48 Hrs (1982)

One of Eddie Murphy's earliest hits and one of the original buddy movies, 48 Hrs. provides some edgy entertainment but has a reputation that has perhaps surpassed the actual strengths of the material.

While on highway chain gang duty, convict Albert Ganz (James Remar, most famous for his role as Ajax in The Warriors) shoots two guards and escapes to freedom with the help of an accomplice. Arriving in San Francisco to seek the hidden money from the robbery that landed in him in jail, Ganz is soon cornered by the police in a seedy motel but shoots his way out after disarming burly police officer Jack Cates (Nick Nolte).

With two police officers now dead in addition to the prison guards, Ganz is a most wanted man, and Cates secures the release of Reggie Hammond (Eddie Murphy), one of Ganz's old accomplices, from jail for 48 hours to help end the killing spree. Jack and Reggie are like oil and water, and while Jack is desperate to catch up with Ganz, Reggie is desperate to get laid during his brief taste of freedom. Eventually the two men earn some mutual respect and close in on Ganz as he closes in on the money.

48 Hrs. has not aged terribly well. The plot was never the point, and it does not get better with time: that the only way to find a vicious and trigger-happy maniac tearing through the city and killing multiple police officers is to seek the help of a criminal who has been languishing in jail for two years defies all logic and the reasonable abilities and motivations of most police forces.

Which leaves us with the buddy dynamics between Nolte's police officer Jack, and Murphy's convict Reggie. It is a foul-mouthed, violence-prone relationship that is surprisingly lacking in wit or sharp laughs. As one of the original buddy movies 48 Hrs. was establishing the template rather than improving upon it, but the lack of ideas in the script is a bit painful, as is the over-dependence on Murphy's antics. Five different writers had a hand in the screenplay, including director Walter Hill, and the lack of a confident, purposeful tone is obvious. 

The scenes that work best allow Murphy to take centre stage, as in the red-neck bar with Reggie pretending to be a cop, but even then, the comedy is contrived, with the support actors waiting on cue to bend over and be the punch line of Murphy's cool jokes.

Nolte brings little that is new to the role of the lone cop doing things his way, with everything from his sour demeanour to his strained relationship with his girlfriend (an under-used Annette O'Toole) to his beat-up car borrowed from countless other movie and television cops.

48 Hrs. makes good use of the San Francisco locations, and the Murphy persona benefits from the freshness of talent being discovered rather than over-exposed. But while it's a movie that remains engaging, with the passage of time 48 Hrs. is looking quite ragged around the edges.

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