retro review: Harlem Nights

The year 1989 was a remarkably different world for Eddie Murphy. The man could do no wrong, or at least that's what it seemed. His movies were uniformly phenomenal successes, both artistically and commercially. I mean, look at his filmography of the period. 48 Hours, Beverly Hills Cop, Coming to America. Any one of these would have been a massive feather in his cap, but with Murphy, the hits just kept on comin'. Paramount Pictures, which produced most of Murphy's films, declared him one of their two biggest money makers, comparable only to the Star Trek franchise.

So by '89, Edie Murphy was able to basically do whatever he wanted. And "whatever he wanted" turned out to be Harlem Nights, such a blatant vanity project that you have to admire the undisguised audacity if nothing else. Murphy directed, produced, and wrote the film, and the cast includes not only Murphy himself, but his best friend, brother (who was not a professional actor at the time), and the two comics most influential to Murphy's own career.

Is it a good movie? Audiences and critics at the time certainly didn't think so. This film single-handedly and permanently killed Murphy's hot streak. He's had some successes since, but he's never been able to re-capture the magic that seemed to define and guide his career through the majority of the 80s. The film itself failed to impress either audiences or critics. It was a notorious flop at the box office, was nominated for a Worst Director Golden Raspberry Award, and won the Golden Raspberry for "worst screenplay."

I just watched the film for the first time, and I have to say that while the movie is clearly flawed, it certainly didn't deserve either Golden Raspberry. My strong suspicious is that the backlash that struck Harlem Nights in general and Murphy in particular so hard was less a reaction to the movie's own flaws and merits, and more a reaction to Murphy's undisguised attitude that "I will make whatever I damn well want, and you, my fans, must watch it." Audiences don't like being told so pointedly what they should and should not enjoy.

The Worst Screenplay Golden Raspberry was especially unfair. My favorite scene is a dialogue between night-club owner "Sugar Ray" Raymond (Richard Pryor) and crooked cop Phil Cantone (Danny Aiello). I'll talk a bit more about both of these characters in a moment, but first we have to address this scene. It is a master-class of acting and, yes, writing. Police detective Cantone has broken into Sugar Ray's home, and the two engage in a civil, polite, even pleasant conversation. Cantone compliments Sugar Ray's house. Sugar Ray compliments Cantone's clothes. Cantone marvels at Sugar Ray's obvious financial success, and happily plays along with Sugar Ray's bald-faced lie that he's made his fortune selling candy.

"Maybe I should get into the candy business!" Cantone enthuses, and he takes it in stride, dropping none of his affability, when Sugar Ray explains that he's not looking for a partner. Not a single threat, nor even a hint of one, is ever made, neither in words nor even in tone, and yet the danger in Cantone's mere presence is still palpable. There's something about Cantone's willingness to run with Sugar Ray's fiction about being a candy store owner -- they both know that they both know that Sugar Ray is lying -- that fills the scene with suspense. No movie with a scene this good should be ever considered for a "worst screenplay" award. Indeed, if the whole movie had been written this well, it might well have been a masterpiece.

Yet there are indeed flaws. Pacing is one of them. The thankfully few scenes involving romance, for example, drag everything to a halt, and seem entirely inconsequential to the story as a whole. And speaking of pacing, I hated the initial entrance of supporting character Jack Jenkins (Stan Shaw), which so abruptly changes the tone of the scene that it felt remarkably artificial. (Serious, slow, dramatic scene, suddenly interrupted by the exclamation, "hey, it's the Champ!" and then suddenly everybody is upbeat.)

I also didn't care for the humor, which was far too heavily dependent on curse words and low-class references to female sexuality. Look, don't get me wrong here: I think that curse words and sexuality can be funny if a movie actually has something funny to do with or say about them. But, as in his otherwise brilliant stand-up material, Murphy seems to think that curse words are automatically funny. A typically "comedic" scene in this film is when Character A cusses at Character B, and the punchline is that Character B swears right back at Character A. Ha ha, hilarious! They just swore at each other!

Murphy also tries to gain humor by occasionally falling back on his more familiar screen persona, delivering a couple of quick monologues with rapid-fire delivery punctuated by his trademarked geeky laugh. But what worked in previous films doesn't work at all here, because Murphy has so carefully crafted this character as a confident, suave man. The few scenes where Murphy suddenly acts like a lovable goofball are such abrupt changes in tone, aren't just unfunny, they're outright jarring.

A more positive note: As a writer, Murphy displays a surprising talent for establishing character without condescendingly spoon-feeding information to his audience. The two characters who benefit from this the most are the previously mentioned Sugar Ray and Phil Cantone. Sugar Ray, the Pryor character, is in fact the initial lead character of the movie, which only gradually shifts the focus to Murphy's character. Sugar Ray is a calm, patient, and wise man. As a night-club owner, he makes his fortune from dealing in sin -- alcohol, illegal gambling, and prostitution -- and yet, he dearly and sincerely cares for his customers, his staff, and especially his adopted son and right-hand man, Quick (Murphy). All of this is established through the characters's actions and manner; Murphy's screenplay never falls back on exposition, with someone saying something like, "that Sugar Ray, he sure is a wise man who cares about his customers!" Roll your eyes at that silly example all you want, but countless movies establish character in precisely such a lazy manner. Murphy's script relies more on the skills of his actors and intelligence of his viewers to establish character.

Danny Aiello's character, Phil Cantone, is a smaller role, but equally well-written. He's charming, cheerful, polite, preferring his threats to lie below the surface of his actual words. This makes his occasional breaks in his facade of alleged benevolence -- a sudden racial slur here, a cruel mockery of a man's stutter there, always delivered with a warm smile of admiration and affection -- all the more hurtful. Murphy could have written this character as arrogant, or blustery, but he instead chose a novel approach, and it really works.

Murphy also shows some promise as a visual director. I particularly admired one moment when Quick slowly enters a room, and the back-light turns him into a silhouette for a surprisingly long time. It's an interesting choice, and one that, again, really works.

It was around that moment in the movie that it suddenly occurred to me what the film's biggest flaw was: Murphy shouldn't have made it as a comedy. That may seem odd, as, at that point in Murphy's career, he was strictly a comedian. But in Harlem Nights, nearly all of his dramatic instincts seem to be effective, and nearly all of his comedic instincts seem to be misguided.

Take Arsenio Hall's supporting charcter, for example. Save for a very brief -- only seconds long -- introductory scene, Hall spends every moment of his screen time crying hysterically. Hall and Murphy obviously believe there's humor in the contradiction that Hall's character is otherwise a tough guy, doing everything a movie tough guy does -- swearing, shouting, threatening, trying to kill the hero -- but he does all of this while bawling uncontrollably. Hall really leans into this aspect of the character, over-acting outrageously. It just doesn't work. At all.

Yet there were a couple of moments that did makeme laugh. I thought it was hilarious that Hall and his henchmen fire off hundreds of rounds from their Tommy guns, and when they briefly pause, henchman #2 fires off one final, completely unnecessary shot from his pistol. Both the excellent timing and the unexpected quirkiness of this moment really made the joke work. I also liked the scene when an outraged mob boss (Michael Lerner) shouts at a henchman, "are you a moron?!" and the moron takes a quick moment to consider his answer before replying, "yes," as he thinks that's the answer that would most please his boss. These scenes were very funny in their own right.

But then you've got all the comedic flaws -- the over-reliance on using swear words as a punchline without really trying to earn a laugh in any way, the jarring inconsistency in Murphy's character, the cringe-worthy over-acting of Arsenio Hall -- and you realize that yes, this should have been a straight-out mafia drama. It's certainly not what people would have expected from Murphy, and it may or may not have been more successful at the box office. But it would have made for a better movie.