Lost Star the Golden Child

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

No, guys, you got it wrong. When Eddie Murphy comes on jiving street smarts (with just a touch of street menace), he needs to land in unnerving proximity to some respectable folks. The sense of danger he imparts to the bourgeoisie in the opening reels of 48 HRS., Trading Places or Beverly Hills Cop is what makes the audience sigh with satisfaction when he reveals his essential good spirit later in the picture.

In his new film Murphy is discovered -- promisingly -- as a tracer of lost children in low-life Los Angeles. But he is immediately hired by an oriental religious cult to find the golden child of the title, their missing messiah who they believe will bring peace to this tired, troubled world. The cult is all serenity and acceptance; Murphy can't get a rise out of them. And it turns out that the evil he is fighting comes from the supernatural agents sent up from Hades to kidnap the child. Hard to trade quips with a bunch of special effects that mostly seem like outtakes from Raiders of the Lost Ark and indeed come from the same shop, George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic.

Dennis Feldman's script labors almost as hard to get Murphy to Tibet (where he must seek the abducted "Prince of Light") as it does to place him in conflict with Beelzebub's legions. But it makes little of the comic possibilities in the star's new screen situation. And Director Michael Ritchie, who can be a wonderfully cockeyed social commentator (Smile, The Survivors, Fletch), seems almost as lost as Murphy when he is back of the beyond. They are both men who need to plant their feet firmly in contemporary American reality if they are to deliver their punches effectively.