Coming 2 America is the sequel to the 1988 Eddie Murphy film Coming to America and again sees Murphy play Akeem of Zamunda who learns from his dying king Joffe Jafur ruler of Zamunda (James Earl Jones) that he has a bastard son in America who must be groomed to become his heir to the throne as a Prince and now Akeem and Semi (Arsenio Hall) set off for America once again to find him.
This was one of my 5 most anticipated films of this year (the others being The King’s Man, Dune, Top Gun: Maverick and No Time to Die) as I am a big fan of the first film it’s my favourite Eddie Murphy film after the first 2 Beverly Hills Cop films he made and every time I watch it I only sing along to the SOULLL GLOOOO jingle but McDowell’s always makes me want a Big Mick-sorry-Big Mac so despite this sequel not going to cinemas due to the pandemic I was still keen to watch it.
And sadly this sequel doesn’t have that SOUL GLOOO, its not as silky smooth, it doesn’t shine through its not SOOUUULLLL GLOOOOOO (here’s why):
- Firstly the sense of fun and sweetness that the first film had is nowhere to be found, part of the fun of the first film was seeing Eddie Murphy play a nice guy, a romantic lead after he rose to stardom playing a smart ass wise cracker like in Beverly Hills Cop and Trading Places among other films, here a lot of the time your just watching the cast sit around on these lavish sets and improvise, ad lib, watch dance numbers and yell at each other.
And its not fun and nor is it funny which leads me to my second problem:
- The comedy, the comedy in the first film was great be it the McDowells scenes/Sexual Chocolate/the Soul Glo jingle and James Earl Jones almost stealing the entire film with his boisterous voice playing every moment with a straight face and creating great laughs out of that but here its replaced by Leslie Jones yelling at everyone once again to create a laugh and I didn’t laugh I’m sorry to say and everyone else just seems to be improvising their way through scenes and they don’t create any laughs either.
And then there’s the cast, I really really loved seeing Eddie back on top again in Dolemite is my Name in 2019 it felt so joyous and so wonderful to see him back again but here it feels like another performance from him where he’s coasting on his image as a leading man and going through the motions to collect a paycheque for the most part, Wesley Snipes is wasted as General Izzi as he really seems to struggle finding a way to play this character as so little seems to be on the page for him to work with and James Earl Jones really should not have bothered coming back as he really only does a cameo.
The one person that does do well is Arsenio Hall whenever he came on screen he did seem like he was having fun and seemed to know what movie he was in but sadly he is not in the film enough to lift it up into something more than it is and it is a genuine shame.
So that was Coming 2 America and I feel very very letdown with this sequel, as someone who loves Eddie Murphy and the original film I had hoped for something more especially after Dolemite was so good but alas it wasn’t to be, just watch the original film and ignore this sequel as its not worth it and I take no ounce of pleasure saying this one bit, 1 out of 5.
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