The Media Tourist

Eddie Murphy strikes in rich in the uproariously entertaining sequel to his 1988 hit comedy

Coming 2 America
Starring Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall & Shari Headley
Directed by Craig Brewer
PG-13
On Amazon Prime Friday, March 5, 2021

He’s back!

In this long-awaited “sequel” to his 1988 box-office smash, Eddie Murphy makes a slick, comfortable return to a fan-favorite role—and slides back into a familiar-feeling comedy that revs up loads of new laughs with an all-star supporting cast of old friends and fresh faces.   

In the original Coming to America, Murphy starred as a young pampered African prince who comes to America to find a wife.

Now, 30 years later, his Prince Akeem is a benevolent ruler, a loving husband and a father of three lovely young daughters. But his kingdom of Zamnda is under threat from the adjoining kingdom of Nextdooria and its menacing mercenary leader, General Izzi (Wesley Snipes), who chides Akeem for not being manly enough to have a son to inherit, or defend, his throne.

But wait a minute: Akeem is surprised when his dying father, King Jaffe Joffer (James Earl Jones), tells him he does indeed have a son, living back in Queens, New York—where, come to think of it, Akeem does vaguely remembers a wild night, some 30 years ago, when he was on his transcontinental wife-finding trek. So he heads back to America to seek out his royal heir.

That’s the set-up for the plot, and the comedy of Coming 2 America, which sweeps wide to include a bunch of actors that fans will be delighted to see from the original film. Arsenio Hall returns as Semmi, Akeem’s aide and confident. Sheri Headley (from TV’s Guiding Light, The Bold and the Beautiful and All My Children) reprises her role as Akeem’s wife, Lisa, now Zamunda’s royal highness. There’s John Amos as Cleo McDowell, now running the Zamunda McDowell’s, the knockoff McDonald’s, where Maurice (comedian Louie Anderson) continues to work.

But the newcomers are particularly impressive, like Snipes. Much better known as an action star, he earns some serious comedy bona fides—and a lot of laughs—as the strutting General Izzi. (Tutoring a group of children guerrilla-warriors-in-training, he reads them a story, then dismisses them to “Play with your grenades—but don’t mess with the sarin…it’s dangerous!”) Murphy, you’ll recall, got his start on Saturday Night Live, and the comedy chops he honed there helped him carve out his own path to movie stardom in the 1980s. So it’s not surprising that he’d invite a couple of more contemporary SNL improv heavyweights for significant new-character roles here—Leslie Jones as Mary, the sassy mother of Akeem’s long-lost son, Lavelle (Jermaine Fowler), and Tracy Morgan as Reem, Mary’s mouthy, street-wise brother. There’s also another SNL player in a one-scene cameo, but it’s uncredited, so I’ll let you discover that one for yourself.

There are some other surprises too: The movie is packed with people doing and saying funny things—thanks to the zingy, zesty, sometimes zany screenplay by Kenya Barris (who also writes for TV’s Black-ish and Grown-ish, and wrote the movie Girls Trip), and director Craig Brewer, whose chemistry with Murphy on the critically acclaimed Dolemite is My Name (2019) was surely a factor in his selection for this job. Look, there’s Morgan Freeman, narrating a funeral! And late-night’s Trevor Noah, as a newscaster on Zamunda’s all-news network, ZNN. And is that really Gladys Night, En Vogue and Salt-N-Pepa, singing slightly revised, Zamundian versions of their biggest hits (like “Midnight Train to Zamunda”)? Yes it is!

Initially planned for theatrical release by Paramount, Coming 2 America is yet another movie casualty of COVID-19. Rather than see it unspool to likely meager pandemic audiences, the studio sold it to Amazon’s streaming service, where it will doubtlessly find a much bigger viewership. But if ever there ever was a movie that would have played “big” in movie houses, man, this one coulda-woulda raised the roof. Watching it, I lost count of the moments, the one-liners and the sight gags that surely would have sent audiences into comedy convulsions, at a time with everyone is so ready for something so outright, so broadly funny. Sigh.  

And Murphy, once again, gets to do something he hasn’t done in a while, and clearly loves—slip into prosthetics and play multiple characters. In addition to making a most-welcome reappearance as the cheesy, jheri-curled R&B singer Randy Watson, he as well as Hall reprise their “dual” roles as Clarence and Morris, the elderly, bantering, comedically bickering Queens barbers in the My-T-Sharp snip shop (along with Sweets, again played by Clint Morris). Murphy also plays Saul, the shop’s ever-present Jewish customer. The movie’s two scenes there are overflowing, joke-filled goldmines, and Murphy looks like he’s having a ball.

The My-T-Sharp isn’t just a stopover for a few ba-da-bing gags; it’s the hub of everything happening in Queens, a portal of Black culture. It’s where Akeem and Semmi go to find out all they need to know in Coming 2 America, as in the original film. There’s a thru-line in the movie between hair-care there and hair-care in Zamunda, when the new young prince, Lavelle, starts to fall in love with the palace groomer Mirambe (Nomzamo Mbatha) assigned to tend his “royal locks.” (In one of their conversations, Lavelle and Mirambe discuss the merits of American movies, specifically the Barbershop franchise, a sequence of films beginning in the early 2000 and set in Chicago with an all-Black cast including Ice Cube, Keith David, Kenan Thompson, Keke Palmer, Nicki Minaj, Regina Hall and Anthony Anderson.) Mirambe tells Lavelle her dream is to one day have her own barbershop—except “women are not allowed to own their own businesses in Zamunda.”  

Can Lavelle change Zamunda’s status quo, and help its young women break its glass ceiling? Does he look better with a rat-tail braid, or without? Can he pass the princely test for bravery, using a pair of royal tweezers to snip off the whiskers of a wild African lion? Will he fall for Mirambe, or for an arranged marriage with General Izzy’s daughter, the sexy siren Bopito (Teyana Taylor, a dancer/choreographer and former Def Jam recording artist)?  

For all its considerable wit and its wiles, the movie also has a sharp, smart satirical edge—about how the times have changed, the anchor of tradition always has to contend with the tide of progress, and how even the most different of “blended” families can bring out the best in each other. Akeem’s daughters (Kiki Layne, Bella Murphy and Akiley Love) are charming, their training as young warriors proves quite resourceful—and the eldest daughter, Meeka, represents a whole generation of young women everywhere whose ambition, intelligence, drive and skill set are the match for any man…especially one who dares call her “nasty.”

And Murphy, well, he’s the magisterial mac daddy of this big house party of comedy—the prince who becomes the king. He’s comfortable enough on his throne to sit back on the sidelines, many times, and let the lion roar, giving his all-star guests plenty of room to roam and strut their stuff. And he knows he doesn’t have to create the comedy, it’s always there; he just has to get it, and maintain it. It just needs a little shaping and some styling—like the hair in the My-T-Sharp barbershop, or like the jokes that fly nonstop through the air there. Comedy is like a good hairstyle, and Murphy has always known where to go to find it, and how to wear it.

And he knows he’s struck gold, again—Black gold, with an almost exclusively all-Black cast, in an uproariously entertaining sequel that resonates with rich Black humor, celebrating its proud Black heritage with a legacy of retro-keen laughter that reminds us of its leading man’s cool confidence and his nearly infallable, career-wide instincts for comedy.

“I’ll always do right for Zamunda,” Akeem tells his wife. “I shall always do what is right for my family.” And Eddie Murphy will always do right, all right, when it comes to finding the funny.