A number of years ago, I brought a young woman home to meet the family. She was a few years younger than me, so many of the movies I grew up with were more or less foreign to her. My brother, thinking he was doing us a favor, loaned us three DVDs so she could catch up a bit: The Great Outdoors, Uncle Buck, and Coming to America. Of the three, I honestly thought only Coming to America was a must-see.
For what it is worth, I ended marrying and later divorcing that woman, and she never saw any of those movies to the best of my knowledge. And now, for some reason, there’s a sequel to the Eddie Murphy classic (a word I don’t toss around lightly) titled Coming 2 America. This many years later, and rated PG-13 to the original’s R, is this even a good idea? I mean, it’s included with Amazon Prime Video, so it didn’t cost me any more money to find out.
Things are going great for Prince Akeem of Zamunda (Eddie Murphy). He is still married to his loving wife Lisa (Shari Headley) with three talented and loving daughters. His father King Jaffe (James Earl Jones) is still ruler though not for much longer, and he keeps reminding his son that Zamunda must have a male heir. Akeem doesn’t see how there’s much he can do, especially as his oldest daughter Meeka (KiKi Layne) seems to be really the right person to eventually take over. However, the king did some research and discovered something even Akeem didn’t know: Akeem did have a son thanks to a little maneuvering done by Akeem’s loyal friend and sidekick Semmi (Arsenio Hall) that ended with a one night stand Akeem doesn’t remember with a woman from Queens (Leslie Jones). Said union produced a son, the chronically unemployed Lavelle (Jermaine Fowler), a fellow who makes a living generally scalping tickets to sporting events for his Uncle Reem (Tracy Morgan).
As it is, a vision from a crazed witch doctor type (Hall again) suggested Akeem’s rule will be very short if he doesn’t get a male heir fast thanks to the efforts of the ruler from the next country over, General Izzi of Nextdoria (Wesley Snipes). As such, Akeem flies to America, finds his son, and returns with the young man and his mother to groom the lad into becoming a proper Prince of Zamunda. That may require a wedding to Izzi’s daughter, and Akeem himself is already on thin ice with Izzi thanks to his own decision not to marry Izzi’s sister thirty or so years earlier. But Lavelle may not be that much more different than his father when it comes to finding a mate, and he soon uses his own Americanized ways to make a position for himself even as he, his mother, and Uncle Reem slowly win over the rest of the Royal Family. Will that be enough?
You know, I didn’t exactly have high hopes for the movie, so good news there: it didn’t exactly deliver much more than what I expected. I think I may have laughed out loud maybe twice and I can’t even remember what the jokes were. I know they weren’t when a couple characters discuss how much of a bad idea it is to make a sequel to a beloved movie many years after the fact. That’s not a good idea unless your own movie really is that good, and this one isn’t. It relies heavily on call-backs and even the occasional footage from the original movie. Many minor characters return to this movie, sometimes for no clear reason other than to say “Hey, these people are still alive!” Jokes are repeated, and not very well. The first had a number of famous faces popping up in small roles, so this one does that too. Nothing here feels particularly original.
The net result is a movie that is often more familiar than funny. The original may be the halfway point in Murphy’s career when he went from R-rated comedies to more family friendly ones where he plays multiple roles. He and Hall reprise most of their roles from the original movie whether it makes sense for the character to appear or not. Even old bits are recycled to a lesser effect, perhaps most notably with Babar the elephant. A quick throw-away line in the original had Murphy happily say a quick hello to a baby elephant by that name. It was over in seconds and good for a quick chuckle. This one brings Babar back as a CGI adult complete with a short speech from Akeem about how Babar is his friend and they both grew up to be fathers. It is obviously not a real elephant this time, it serves no real purpose in the movie, and yet there it is. And that can more or less describe this sequel as well. It’s not the original, it serves no real purpose, and yet there it is. There’s nothing particularly bad about it. It just isn’t funny. Then again, there probably isn’t a worse thing for a comedy to be than that.
Grade: C-
0 Comments