The African monarch Akeem learns he has a long-lost son in the United States and must return to America to meet this unexpected heir and build a relationship with his son.
Along with the atrocious recent “Tom & Jerry,” Craig Brewer’s “Coming 2 America” has “Hollywood cash grab” written all over it. In its attempts to play to the current cancel culture/#MeEverything generation/uber-politically-correct-but-extremely-confused audiences ready to pounce on anything remotely controversial, it fails at pleasing anyone. Considering the roster of talent involved, it’s a crushing disappointment. Not that we didn’t see it coming. But I had an inkling of hope.
After King Jaffe dies at his own funeral, Akeem (Eddie Murphy) and Semmi (Arsenio Hall) go back to New York to locate Akeem’s “bastard son” Lavelle (Jermaine Fowler). Once they do so with extreme ease — they basically locate the tiniest of needles in the largest of haystacks through the magic of cinema — they return to Zamunda with Lavelle and his mother Mary (Leslie Jones), with whom Akeem apparently had a brief… thing during his first infamous visit. But is Lavelle built for the role of King? Does he even want it? Will he be forced into marriage? Or will he step aside, letting a female leader ignite a generational paradigm shift?
Multiple, repetitively choreographed dance sequences make up for 40% of the film; the rest consists of cheap rehashes of jokes that worked brilliantly in the first one, and land with a resounding thud here, each consecutive one more painful than the last. The film lost me at minute 20, and I still had 90 minutes to sit through.
One of the key mistakes “Coming 2 America” makes is shifting the focus from the wonderful duo of Murphy and Hall to the not-wonderful-at-all duo of Lavelle and Mary Junson. Jones considers being loud and abrasive the equivalent of comedy, and she’s sorely mistaken. As for Fowler, he’s a blank slate, an entitled punk with poor timing and next-to-no defining characteristics.
The film’s other cardinal sin is shifting the focus from New York to Zamunda. I don’t think many of us watching the first one wished for a sequel that would almost entirely take place in the admittedly picturesque kingdom. Two kings, fish-out-of-water, in NYC — that was funny. An average guy-next-door suddenly finding himself, fish-out-of-water, rich, and discovering true love in a utopian kingdom — that’s not so funny.
No wonder the film’s wittiest, and all-too-brief, scenes take place in the barbershop, the one location that’s revisited with moderate success. Murphy and Hall again assume multiple roles of the shop’s inhabitants, and they’re an absolute hoot. A spin-off involving just these four would 100% be better than this doomed enterprise.
Eddie Murphy phones it in, and Arsenio Hall does what he can with the cheap lines he’s given. Morgan Freeman’s cameo appearance is distracting. Wesley Snipes — who was so effective, in a campy way, starring opposite Murphy in “Dolemite Is My Name” — is just pure camp here as the leader of the neighboring country, constantly accompanied by yet more choreographed sequences of his loyal pseudo-dance/fight troupe. This may sound like comedy gold, but trust me, it ain’t.
Poorly-CGI-d lions and #Relevant motifs that overwhelm the story — or whatever semblance of a story there is — aside, it’s the fact that it somehow manages to tarnish the memories of the original that leaves the bitterest taste. Perhaps it’s the appearance of the original cast — all seemingly so eager to bottle lightning twice, they’re unaware that they’re getting electrocuted.
Available on Blu-ray™ & DVD March 8th
