That tension, though, is just a vehicle for the movie’s main stars to do their thing with a veneer of newness. And the chance at shaking up the gender dynamics. Imagine some random kid from Queens showing up to claim what would, in an ideal world, be yours - what you hope your father will be a big enough man to bestow upon you - and you can imagine the new tension added to this movie. Which is complicated news given the life that Akeem - once a prince, now a king - lives with Queen Lisa (Headley) and his three daughters (played by KiKi Layne, Akiley Love, and Bella Murphy, real-life daughter of Eddie), the oldest of which, Princess Meeka (Layne), has her eyes on the throne despite laws that forbid a woman wearing the crown. Suffice it to say that wild oats were sown back in 1988 which, well, technically led to an heir. Watch Coming 2 America with a 30-day free trial to Amazon Prime here (Here’s where it may as well be noted that Colin Jost is in this movie for some reason, and he’s about as out of place here as the Pepsi product placement.) Truly, a Coming 2 America sequel without Jones and Morgan is, in retrospect, a little hard to imagine - not only because of the SNL connection, but there’s also that. The result: a movie that’s funniest when it plays the hits and when, thanks to some fresh faces in the room - among them Leslie Jones, Wesley Snipes, Tracy Morgan, and Nomzamo Mbatha - it adds characters who fit in so seamlessly they could just have well been in the original. Instead of a humorously bewildered prince, Akeem Joffer (Murphy), making the trek from Zamunda to Queens, we get a young man from Queens, Lavelle Junson (Jermaine Fowler), catapulted into a strange new life in Zamunda. Coming 2 America takes the same idea - fish-out-of-water meets black romantic comedy meets every possible excuse for Murphy and Hall to play as many characters as possible - and gives it a Next Generation spin, only flipping the script. Only the Jheri-curled Eriq La Salle, Allison Dean (who played Headley’s younger sister), and the late Madge Sinclair (who played the mother of Prince Akeem with such memorable poise) are missing and, frankly, missed.īut not because this 2021 sequel is lacking for material. The gang’s (almost) all here: Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall, Shari Headley, James Earl Jones, Louie Anderson, Paul Bates - even John Amos. Too close to the original and we’ll complain that we may as well just have rewatched the original (which we will anyway) stray too far and we’ll say, “You’ve gone too far.” That’s the game.Īnd Coming 2 America, directed by Craig Brewer, plays it pretty well. It’s a fine line that practically begs to make Goldilocks of us all. Namely, everyone who loved the original, people who’ve rewatched it a million times, who have Soul Glo memes saved on their phones, who know every word to Sexual Chocolate’s song who - as in my case - grew up in families where Coming to America was probably the only consensus movie that everyone from my grandmother down to myself and my cousins would all crowd around the television to watch and rewatch. I don’t envy the job of anyone tasked with taking a classic Eighties comedy - Coming to America, say - and making a decades-later sequel that tries to please its guaranteed audience.
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