Coming 2 America

Fun reunion, but pales in comparison to the first movie

Three decades after the original film, Akeem (Eddie Murphy) discovers that he needs to go back to America with Semmi (Arsenio Hall). The principal cast members return with some new characters played by Jermaine Fowler, Tracy Morgan, Nomzamo Mbatha and KiKi Layne.

Coming 2 America (2021) is nowhere near as good as the first movie (which is probably my all-time favorite comedy), but it is fun to see where the characters are at after over thirty years, not to mention what they look like.

There are four things that hold the flick back: It seems like its in a hurry, peppered with music videos, not to mention its noticeably goofier than the original. Its afraid to slow down ...

Before it even begins, Coming 2 America already has five strikes. It integrates a number in its misleading title (most of the action takes place in Zamunda), it arrives three decades after the original, the plot revolves around a son that the protagonist did not know he had, its content has been sanitized to reach a wider public, and its stars are, albeit briefly, digitally de-aged. This means that C2A has at least one thing in common with 2 Fast 2 Furious, The Odd Couple II, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Expendables 3, and The Irishman. This is not good company.

We learn that Zamunda has a neighboring country called Nextdoria. This name perfectly illustrates the creative bankruptcy of director Craig Brewer (tho...