Harlem Nights (1989)

Harlem Nights is an ostentatious late-eighties crime comedy written and directed by the affable Eddie Murphy during the apex of his career. The film details the rags-to-riches rise of a crime boss named Sugar Ray (Pryor) and his high swinging Harlem jazz club during the 1920's and 30's. Branding himself as a bit of a bon vivant, Ray willingly embraces illegal hooch, prostitution and gambling. To help him, he takes the young Quick (Murphy), a street tough-turned second-in-command, under his wing. Unfortunately years of easy success brings un-welcomed competition from New York mafia head Bugsy Calhoune (Lerner) and envious scorn from corrupt cops and the white establishment at- large.The plot then hinges on what the denizens of Harlem's bootlegger class will ultimately do to save face. Ray, a fair-minded and uncommonly cautious miscreant wants to gather his chips and skip town while Quick is itching for a fight. Much of the film's moral messaging is dropped in the fast-paced conversations between Ray and Quick - Ray of course being the voice of reason. "What are they gonna put on your tombstone? 'Here lies a man, 27 years old. He died, but he ain't no punk.' Hey man, that's bulls**t." Ray's words tower over the movie like a totem.The mood of Harlem Nights veers wildly from low-brow comedy to a fiery mobster film, even within the same scene. All the while, Eddie Murphy's motor-mouth delivery, Richard Pryor's innocuous bumbling and the gruff inclusion of Red Foxx, keeps the seams of this film from popping open with reckless abandon. It's an uneasy mix. One which nearly breaks its ability to transport in tone-deaf scenes that include Arsenio Hall as a bereaved hood and Della Reese as Sugar Ray's resident madam. It's easy to see why Harlem Nights was initially panned given three generations of comedic giants are on screen yet none go for the big titters.Yet what Harlem Nights accomplishes goes beyond a cursory look at the film's rocky production history (rumor is Pryor and Murphy did not get along). With this film comes a time capsule - a lovingly developed recreation of the Harlem Renaissance as told by those who have a stake in seeing that period on the big screen. Being enveloped by Harlem Nights means visiting the busy epicenter of a foreign country that no longer exists. It's overwhelming, jarring and even a little scary but you can't deny its vibrancy.Thus the language may be a little blue, but it does come with unfettered urgency. The humor may be too broad and mean but it dozily leans on some incredibly lush world-building. There are no big comedic payoffs in the traditional sense, but there is a heart to this picture that channels the oral-history, stubborn divergence and tumult of the Harlem Renaissance. Surely we can give a film a second chance based on that alone, cant we?

Father and son team Sugar Ray (Richard Pryor) and Quick (Eddie Murphy) run a successful gambling establishment which in turn causes them to upset local mobster Bugsy Calhoune (Michael Lerner). Sugar Ray and Quick's lucrative business is netting them between $10,000 and $15,000 and upon learning this, Calhoune demands two thirds of their takings in order for Sugar and Quick to continue trading. Sugar and Quick refuse to give in to Calhoune's unreasonable demands and hatch a cunning plan to take down the notorious mobster.Murphy has certainly put a lot of effort into giving this a 1920's/1930's feel to it; the set designs, vehicles etc all look pretty authentic. It's a shame really that he didn't put as much thought, care or effort into anything else in the film.The first thing I noticed about this film is that Murphy never really seemed sure about what direction he wanted to take the film in; I initially thought that this was going to be some kind of parody of mob life and gangsters (the name Bugsy Calhoune is presumably a play on 'Bugsy Malone'), but aside from the amusing opening scene the film isn't actually very funny and a lot of the time it's far too serious for it to work as an out and out parody. The story in itself isn't a bad one, but Murphy offers very little in the way of tension; the idea of a mob boss who runs New York coming after two small-time business men should present an intimidating scenario, but Calhoune is not a particularly terrifying presence and even when he's supposed to be intimidating Sugar and Quick I never really felt scared for them.The film also takes a very long time to get going and the first half of the film seems a little self-indulgent - there's a lot of fighting and squabbling and lots of things happening in the first half that do little to move things forward - I personally felt that a lot of these things were done for their amusement rather than ours).I think the thing that probably ruined the film the most for me was Arsenio Hall; after putting in a great performance in Coming To America he literally puts in a 'nails on the chalkboard' performance in Harlem Nights. His whiny, irritating character and embarrassing overacting almost single-handedly ruined the film. It could also be argued that Murphy didn't get the best performance out of Richard Pryor either; Pryor is at his best when he's given a character to work with and when he's able to act daft, but Murphy has Pryor playing his character a little too straight and this also makes this a lesser film in my opinion. Like Pryor, Murphy underplays his character slightly and shows more restraint than we're used to seeing from him, but this also works slightly against the picture and results in it being more dull than it should have been. By contrast Danny Aiello probably gave the best performance and seemed to have fun, but without hamming it up.The bottom line is that it falls short on laughs, the dramatic aspects don't work too well and the film lacks any real menace or intensity. Even if you're a fan of Pryor or Murphy I'd still suggest that you skip this one.

There has never been a film have so many African American classic comedians, actors and celebrities in one film. I really respect and appreciate Eddie Murphy doing this film. It is really good to see so many of these actors looking so good (Robin Harris, Richard Pryor, Redd Fox, etc.). A lot of them or no longer with us. I loved the fact that he put Roberto Duran in for a brief cameo. I loved what Arsenio Hall did as well. It was good to see blacks in a film figuring out how to get their piece of the pie in an already corrupt environment. It was double bad for blacks in that time period. Nice to see that their was a group like this that managed to live well and do their own thing. I hadn't seen anything like it until I saw this film. I feel like there were definitely stories coming out of Hollywood that avoided these kinds of topics.

Harlem Nights" is beyond bad - it's narcissistic, misogynistic and extremely mean-spirited. There's maybe two funny moments in this shrill directorial bomb from Eddie Murphy, and breaks absolutely no new ground in its tale of gangsters, speakeasies and double-crosses. In this limping vanity production, Murphy's script isn't in the least bit clever or surprising, his characters are bland and the dialogue is stultifying. Murphy hasn't done as well by himself, though. His 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. The script is painfully workmanlike, the pacing is comatose and the entire movie radiates a sense of overindulgence.