A film I never imagined would get a sequel is the 1988 Eddie Murphy comedy classic Coming to America. The original film is one of those films which long time fans have seen dozens and dozens of times and can quote classic lines from such as ‘sexual chocolate!’ and ‘I warned you. I’ll be forced to thrash you.’
So, when a direct sequel was announced it was one of the most unexpected, exciting and nerve-wracking announcements of a film in a long time. What if it’s no good? What if it destroys the legacy of the beloved original?
Well, the sequel came and went without being a big hit and without destroying the original…mostly because it was just somewhat forgettable.
The best thing I can say about the sequel is that it is a love letter to the original in many ways. It just unfortunately also makes some choices that whilst I understand as a viewer, as a long-time fan I wish they hadn’t made.
One thing I can say straight off the bat, is that in nostalgia terms this ticks most boxes you could want it to. Incredibly most of the main characters from the original return here and almost all of them easily slip back into the characters they haven’t played in three decades. It’s amusing how so many of them feel like they’ve been stuck in time and the crew from the barbershop including Eddie Murphy as Clarence and Saul, Clint Smith as Sweets and Arsenio Hall as Morris are still hanging out there just as they were in the 1980s. Considering how old they were back then it’s one of those moments where you question if they’d all still realistically be alive still, and then shrug it off to just enjoy that they’re back.
Paul Bates is back as Oha, still proudly announcing people at the kingdom and breaking out into surprisingly high notes which is still funny for him to then go back to his otherwise stony-faced seriousness.
Noticeably Allison Dean doesn’t return as Lisa’s sister Patrice, nor does Eriq La Salle as Darryl Jenks, so other then a couple of retro posters and products in the background and the recognisable theme tune as background music the Soul Glo hair product empire doesn’t make a return.
James Earl Jones did return as the King, and sadly, they killed him off. I didn’t like that fact, but I understand it. I think for the plot of the film to evolve the characters you had to have Prince Akeem become King Akeem, and the only real way to do that would be for King Jaffe Joffer die at some point.
For me though, it just feels a shame that in what would turn out to be James Earl Jones final on-screen role, you kill him off with a distasteful scene whereby the King wants to attend his own funeral and dies whilst stood in his own casket. This was dumber than anything in the original movie, and it feels a disconnect that his character would do that after having watched him in the original where he was played very straight and authoritative.
There are some cool CGI special effect scenes whereby we see new scenes of Akeem and Semi in the 1980s, but these are fleeting and in a sense just make me wish they could have somehow done the whole movie this way and feed into the lost 1980s movie we never got.
The main plot though, doesn’t work for me. The idea is with these flashbacks that it is established that Prince Akeem did sleep with another woman he met during the meeting a woman montage in the first film, slept with her and now all these years later, does have a son and heir.
For me this betrays that he was in America in the first film to look for his Queen. Call me an old romantic, but having not gone ahead with the arranged marriage, I liked that he sought out Lisa and wasn’t just in America to sow his royal oats as King Jaffee Joffer had mistakenly thought Akeem wanted to do in the first film.
And yeah, they put some of this down to drugs, but again, that is something that doesn’t sit well with me after they went to lengths to show that Akeem was sensible and honourable and wouldn’t get caught up in that kind of thing.
Jermaine Fowler plays Lavelle, the long-lost son, and Eddie Murphy and Akeem he was not. Having some kind of reversed fish out of water story here was a nice idea, but it didn’t work. What made the first film so funny was seeing this African Prince who was very positive, calm and kind as well as naïve, try and fail to fit in with New York life. Having an American character suddenly in Zamunda where he is struggling to be a worthy prince just isn’t a good swap.
Leslie Jones plays Lavell’s mother, and I just found her overbearing in this movie. Her overconfidence and brashness just failed for me. The idea that she slept with Akeem when he was looking for Lisa just made no sense and lessens my opinion of his character from the original movie.
And speaking of Eddie Murphy, who now doesn’t feel like the main character in his own film, he is suddenly much more serious and has little fun throughout. It’s a real shame, because if handled right, this could have been the best comedy film in many years at the time of its release.
Wesley Snipes is something of a bright spark in this and feels like someone who should have been a returning star from the original, except for the fact that he actually wasn’t in it.
Personally, this is how I think the film should have played out. It could have kept the same dumb plot whereby Lavelle is said to be Akeem’s son, and Leslie Jones as Mary is his mother. But calling back to how Semmi pretended to be the prince in the first movie, it should have turned out that Semmi was actually the father of Lavelle because all Mary remembered is she met a guy when drunk who claimed to be a Prince.
That way you could have had the same basic plot but not tarnish Akeem’s character. You could have also used Lavelle better as being more like Semmi, for better or for worse and played off the idea that throughout the film that Lavelle and Semmi don’t get along, only to find out that they are father and son.
Oh well. That would have been more fun.
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