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Weak-sauce retread
- Coming 2 America, arriving Friday March 5 on Amazon Prime after being sold by Paramount for a reported $125 million, is exactly what you feared it would be. It’s a weak-sauce retread of the 1988 original, one not only defanged for a PG-13 (the original was R-rated) but written and performed at a level resembling a morality tale for young children.
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Mar 8, 2021 · While some reviews claim Coming 2 America is uncomfortably close to a retread, the film still brings twists and themes to the table that might fly over your head because you're too...
- Aaron Greenbaum
Mar 4, 2021 · Coming 2 America falls blandly into the former camp. Prince Akeem (Eddie Murphy) is on the verge of becoming king of Zamunda as his father (James Earl Jones) nears death, but the impending...
Mar 4, 2021 · Coming 2 America, arriving Friday March 5 on Amazon Prime after being sold by Paramount for a reported $125 million, is exactly what you feared it would be. It’s a weak-sauce retread of the...
- Familiar faces, familiar jokes.
- 2021 Movies Preview
- Verdict
By Zaki Hasan
Updated: Nov 3, 2022 8:45 pm
Posted: Mar 5, 2021 12:00 am
Coming 2 America is now available exclusively on Amazon Prime.
Back in the summer of 1989, CBS aired a one-and-done TV pilot for a proposed Coming to America TV series, following on from the then-recent feature and starring Tommy Davidson as Tariq, younger brother of the movie’s Prince Akeem, with Paul Bates reprising his role as manservant Oha. I only bring the TV show up because its mere existence assures that Coming 2 America is not the worst follow-up to the original film. That’s right, 33 years later, Eddie Murphy is back in his royal finery for a belated sequel whose title is the most original thing about it.
And while it’s nice to see Murphy give his Zamundan accent another whirl alongside returning co-stars Arsenio Hall, Shari Headley, and James Earl Jones, the resultant effort is painless enough but feels less like an essential add-on to a fairly beloved original than a by-the-numbers byproduct of Hollywood’s insatiable appetite for pumping out pre-existing brands in slightly new configurations.
And with an impending invasion from neighboring Nextdoria (led by Wesley Snipes’ General Izzi) on his mind, Akeem once more hops a plane to the States alongside trusted aide Semmi (Hall) to bring his long lost son Lavelle (Jermaine Fowler) and Lavelle’s mom (and Akeem’s one-time one night stand) Mary, played by Leslie Jones, back to Zamunda to educate them in the royal ways. What follows is the usual fish-out-of-water antics, albeit in reverse, with Lavelle struggling to adapt to Zamundan life while finding himself maneuvered into the same kind of arranged marriage his pop tried to avoid 30 years ago.
To the film’s credit, there are some fun bits interspersed throughout thanks to the likable Fowler, the dependable Jones, and Tracy Morgan along for the ride as Lavelle’s uncle. But the shame of it is that Murphy re-teaming with his I Am Dolemite director Craig Brewer, working from a script by, among others, Black-ish creator Kenya Barris offered the promise of more. Sadly, Headley’s Lisa is the character who feels most left by the wayside in the various plot machinations, and it’s jarring to see the character who was the entire focus of Akeem’s story the first time shunted off to the side like a glorified supporting character.
While there is a very much appreciated effort to reframe some of the first film’s more glaringly sexist tropes from a post-millennium perspective, what Coming 2 America proves more than anything is how treacherous the terrain can be when making comedy sequels. More often than not they sidestep working to create their own laughs in favor of continuing comedic riffs begun in the initial entry. It’s the cinematic equivalent of playing “Freebird” to a full house, and it’s also where the Austin Powers and Meet the Parents sequels fell down.
Remember McDowell's restaurant? Now they’re open in Zamunda! And look, there’s Akeem’s would-be bride from the first one (Vanessa Bell Calloway), still barking like a dog! And the Queens barbershop trio (played by Murphy, Hall, and Clint Smith) is back too along with lusty Reverend Brown (played by Hall). The whole movie goes like that, with any attempt at a fully-formed story taking a backseat to a roster of familiar faces and places aimed at firing the nostalgia neurons of its audience.
This isn’t to say it’s not fun to see, mind you. After all, how could it not be fun having Murphy and Hall back in makeup as the various characters they played in addition to their Zamundan alter egos, or to see John Amos and Louie Anderson back working at McDowall’s? But too often Coming 2 America feels like a checklist of familiar elements deemed necessary to bring back or risk the ire of longtime fans asking, “Hey, whatever happened to…?” (Sadly, we miss out on an encore from Eriq La Salle as Jheri-curled Darryl.)
To some extent, this is understandable after thirty-plus years of that first film’s gags taking on iconic status, but the whole thing takes on a “Very Brady Christmas” vibe after a while, with the eager desire to replay familiar beats robbing the sequel of its freshness. Akeem having an American son he never knew about isn’t so much a natural outgrowth of where the original left off than a necessary sop to the sequel gods, to allow a different-but-similar refresh of the premise.
Coming at the tail end of a remarkable run of box office success for Murphy during the 1980s, Coming to America has remained a fairly beloved entry in the star’s catalog even this many years later so it’s easy to see why home studio Paramount pulled the trigger on this second installment. Murphy remains in fine form, as does Hall. And while there’s...
- Zaki Hasan
Coming 2 America was released by Amazon Prime Video on March 5, 2021, one day earlier than was announced. [8] The film was initially scheduled to be theatrically released by Paramount Pictures on August 7, 2020, [57] but was pushed back to December 18, 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Mar 5, 2021 · Its much-anticipated sequel, ‘Coming 2 America,’ flips that approach upside down and depicts quintessentially New York natives attempting to understand the foreign culture and tradition of the fictional Kingdom of Zamunda. Understandably, the film is brimming with nostalgia and easter eggs.
Mar 4, 2021 · Viewers who weren’t amused by “Coming to America” certainly aren’t going to enjoy this retread, but even fans of the original will wonder why they aren’t just rewatching the first...
