After reviewing the original earlier this week, Drunken Yoda is back with his Coming 2 America review.
MEH is the best word I can describe. In all honesty, I started it twice and fell asleep both times before the third time being the charm.
There’s nothing overtly terrible about the movie, a couple of jabs at a few left-wing cultural norms, a couple of jabs at right-wing ones, and the usual hijinks Murphy and Hall have playing the various characters they played in the first movie.
None of its very funny. I was pleasantly surprised that occasionally I still laughed in the first one. Not so here. Every gag seems to be a somewhat tired retread of what came before. For instance, the old Jewish man Murphy plays, asks the King about his lion pelt, “What is that, velvet?” It’s funny. Here he does it again in a different context and its tired.
There’s nothing compelling about this movie. There are a few possibly interesting ideas that don’t get fully explored. The idea of women having few rights in Zumunda but are also proud of their country and do love their lives there is interesting but really goes nowhere. The idea that Akeem has lost that rebellious spirit with the weight of the crown on him now that his father has passed also could be interesting but again, it’s not explored. COMING 2 AMERICA REVIEW
Part of the appeal of the first one was the fish out of water aspect. Here there isn’t much “America” in Coming 2 America with the fish out of water being Prince Akeems son being out of place in Zumunda. But since Americans are the butt of the joke in those types of “stranger in a strange land” stories, he doesn’t have too much to do to affect the Zumundans around him except for the woman he falls in love with.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing overtly insulting or awful. That’s kind of the problem, there’s nothing edgy at all in this. The story is inoffensive, the people are inoffensive, and the comedians are doing tired retreads of what we’ve already seen.
Although Akeem and his wife Lisa are clearly happy and in love still, an aspect I really appreciated in this day and age of deconstruction, in the end, Akeem was deconstructed with him not making any real changes to Wakanda culture in the last 30 years, even at one point somewhat endorsing arranged marriages again for the sake of politics.
Eh, it’s not like destroying Luke Skywalker, this was a lesser classic of Murphy’s 80s resume and the movie isn’t enough of anything to really be angry at it. It will be instantly forgotten in a few months and like the RoboCop remake, people will forget it was ever made.
