Coming 2 America (2021)

Coming 2 America (2021)

3/10

 

Starring

Eddie Murphy

Arsenio Hall

Jermaine Fowler

Leslie Jones

Tracy Morgan

KiKi Layne

 

Directed by Craig Brewer

 

Back in 1988 and throughout the 90s, Coming to America was the movie to watch. It was funny, innovative, and had a plot you could never get tired of seeing play out.

So basically, all I want to know is, who asked for a Coming to America sequel?
Because that person needs a good slap.

This would have best served as a glorified fest of black celebrities from the 80s/90s reunion. We had Wesley Snipes, Morgan Freeman, En Vogue, Salt-N-Pepa, and even Gladys Knight.

There was nothing more annoying than seeing a plot do the same thing as the first movie did and not bother to add any reasonable ingenuity. What happened to coming up with something new?

"If it isn’t broken, why fix it?" does not apply here. If you want to apply it, then this nonsense should never have been made.

The king of Zamunda (Jaffe, played by James Earl Jones) is dying, and his son, Prince Akeem (Eddie Murphy), is going to be the new ruler. The problem is, he doesn’t have any sons—Akeem has three daughters. The neighboring kingdom is waiting for Jaffe to die so they can attack and take over Zamunda. Jaffe tells Akeem he needs to find a male heir or face challenges with the general of the rival kingdom, played by Wesley Snipes.

Just to solve this problem, there happen to be some anti-aging CGI, old unused footage, and many graphic effects artists on hand to help us visualize the story writers concocting a stupid tale of Akeem fathering a child. You see, Semmi (Arsenio Hall) arranged a woman (Leslie Jones) for Akeem when they first came to America. The woman, unknown to Akeem and not her fault, drugged him, and they had sex, which led to a child… a son. Akeem and Semmi again have to go to America to bring that child back to save Zamunda.

When watching this movie, and each time I see Wesley Snipes doing what the hell he was doing, I get extremely angry and disgusted.

This movie is so heavily dependent on people enjoying it based on nostalgia that, when they’re not talking about what happened in the first movie, they’re doing visual flashbacks. While these (talks and visual flashbacks) would have been cool once and manageable twice, this movie had them happening more than three times.

What is the whole point of making this movie if all you do is borrow heavily from the first part and then gang up a story that could have been thought up by a kindergarten? Then, to add insult to injury, the cast were either people who should have retired or people who need to find out who put a curse on them, preventing them from getting better jobs.

You can catch this wasted over-an-hour of my life on Amazon Prime. The best advice I can give you is to never see this movie.