''Harlem Nights,'' it's worth remembering, is a comedy, though as the body count piles up and entire reels go by without a joke in sight, it's also easy to forget.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Mar 26, 2019

If he's going to confine himself to bad movies like "Harlem Nights," it's probably better that he writes and directs them himself.

| Mar 26, 2019

Harlem Nights offers a depressing answer to that not entirely pressing question, "Will success spoil Eddie Murphy?" It looks as if it has.

| Mar 26, 2019

The plot exposition gets laborious in spots, the period flavor is only occasional and approximate, and the direction tends to be clunky, yet the strong secondary cast helps to take up some of the slack.

| Mar 26, 2019

Unfortunately, a real comedy needs a decent plot, interesting characters and some kind of creative context to work out of.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Mar 26, 2019

If only it had played funnier.

| Mar 26, 2019

The plot is a standard recycling of rival gangs battling for turf, and the stunner is why Murphy found any interest in his own script.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Mar 26, 2019

Murphy's writing is about as snappy as a Sunday school lesson. The constant obscenities become a distraction and an eventual turnoff, and seem to be used when the writer and director can't invent something more creative.

| Jun 12, 2018

The movie is a whirlingly divergent romp, blending serious violence with outrageous comedy, but it has the feel of oral history, of lives and times rescued from oblivion.

| Oct 27, 2016

This blatantly excessive directorial debut for Eddie Murphy is overdone, too rarely funny and, worst of all, boring.

| Mar 26, 2009

Harlem Nights is a bloated period piece, brandishing big production values, one or two good performances (notably Pryor and Aiello), the occasional laugh, and a spectacularly duff sub-Sting storyline that doesn't so much climax as go prematurely limp.

| Jun 24, 2006

Mr. Murphy's effort is distinguished by his own singular presense as an actor, and by the delight he takes in appearing with his various co-stars.

| May 20, 2003

Once there was Freddy. Once there was Chuckie and Jason and Howard the Duck. Now there is the scariest of them all. Now there is Harlem Nights.

| Jan 1, 2000

Does it matter to Eddie Murphy whether Harlem Nights is good or bad? It doesn't look like it.

| Jan 1, 2000

An uninspired cross between Cotton Club and the characters of Damon Runyon, told in cliches so broad you keep waiting for it to poke fun at itself, but it never does.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 1, 2000