How did critics treat the Eddie Murphy film Harlem Nights?”
The movie veers uneasily from not-funny comedy to not-persuasive melodrama. Murphy forgets that the dialogue in old-fashioned crime pictures was as highly stylized as the settings. In place of sharply polished wisecracks, he gives us the steady mutter of the witless, unfelt obscenities that are the argot of our modern mean streets. [27 Nov 1989, p.88] Unfortunately, entertainer-for-life Murphy, directing for the first time, seems to have spent his energies on topping the bill rather than on the bill itself. Eddie Murphy’s directorial work is amateurish at best. And as a performer he looks as if he is in agony, as if his mother made him stand in front of the camera for punishment.
From Wikipedia: Harlem Nights is a 1989 comedy-drama crime film starring Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor. The film also featured Michael Lerner, Danny Aiello, Redd Foxx, Della Reese and Murphy’s brother Charlie Murphy. Murphy and Pryor star as a father-and-son team running a nightclub in late-1930s Harlem, New York while contending with gangsters and corrupt police officials. Murphy wrote and directed the film and served as an executive producer. He had always wanted to direct and star in a period piece, as well as work with Pryor, who he considered his greatest influence in stand-up comedy. Harlem Nights was a critical failure, but a financial success, grossing 3 1/2 times the amount it cost to make it (worldwide) and is well known for starring three generations of black comedians (Foxx, Pryor, and Murphy).
