Coming 2 America takes the same idea - fish-out-of-water meets black romantic comedy meets every possible excuse for Murphy and Hall to play as many characters as possible - and gives it a Next Generation spin, only flipping the script. Only the Jheri-curled Eriq La Salle, Allison Dean (who played Headley’s younger sister), and the late Madge Sinclair (who played the mother of Prince Akeem with such memorable poise) are missing and, frankly, missed.īut not because this 2021 sequel is lacking for material. The gang’s (almost) all here: Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall, Shari Headley, James Earl Jones, Louie Anderson, Paul Bates - even John Amos. Too close to the original and we’ll complain that we may as well just have rewatched the original (which we will anyway) stray too far and we’ll say, “You’ve gone too far.” That’s the game.Īnd Coming 2 America, directed by Craig Brewer, plays it pretty well. It’s a fine line that practically begs to make Goldilocks of us all. Namely, everyone who loved the original, people who’ve rewatched it a million times, who have Soul Glo memes saved on their phones, who know every word to Sexual Chocolate’s song who - as in my case - grew up in families where Coming to America was probably the only consensus movie that everyone from my grandmother down to myself and my cousins would all crowd around the television to watch and rewatch. I don’t envy the job of anyone tasked with taking a classic Eighties comedy - Coming to America, say - and making a decades-later sequel that tries to please its guaranteed audience.
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