Reviews

• People may go to see Eddie Murphy once, twice, three or even six times in disposable movies like Harlem Nights, but if he wants to realize his potential he needs to work with a better writer and director than himself.

  Roger Ebert - The Chicago Sun-Times
  
  26 April 2013

• The best thing about the film is the way it allows Richard Pryor to rise above the demeaning buffoon roles he's been playing for the last few years and finally play a character with dignity and style.

  Jay Carr - The Boston Globe
  
  26 April 2013

• Harlem Nights isn't the embarrassing vanity production it might have been, there's still not a lot to be said for it.

  - TV Guide
  
  26 April 2013

• I don't mind that Nights is a potty-mouth benchmark; crude verbiage is appropriate to the leads, as well as the film's subject matter. This is, however, an amazingly mean two hours. Even the funniest gag involves Murphy's fatal shooting of three men.

  Mike Clark - USA Today
  
  26 April 2013

• In Harlem Nights, Eddie Murphy continues his one-man war against the female gender. Those women he doesn't kill outright are punched, maimed and slugged with garbage cans. But apparently they deserve it-there isn't a single female character in the film who isn't a prostitute.

  Dave Kehr - The Chicago Tribune
  
  26 April 2013