I'm going to make this short and to the point. This was one of the saddest things I've ever had to endure movie wise. When it comes to sequels especially ones that are long in gestation I'm always leery and usually I can lower my expectations to a point that feels reasonable because I understand all of the things that they have to climb all over in order to be as good or better than what I originally saw. Many of those elements having to do with bias already set within me based upon the ties, strength, and power of nostalgia in and of itself. So it's not as if I came into “Coming 2 America” looking for one of the greatest sequels of all time, or to feel exactly as I had felt when I watched the previous film. I merely wanted to laugh, be entertained, and yeah imbibe on a little bit of nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. What I got was a few cute chuckles, the worst kind of revisits to nostalgia, (which is the cynical and craven sort) and one of the worst scripts I've ever heard read aloud by actors. I saw quite a few folk tweet out some version of writer Kenya Barris should never be allowed to write again and though for the most part I hate that kind of sentiment for anybody out there making a career for themselves - I have to agree. That man should never be allowed to write again. He needs to be barred from ever looking at, breathing on, uttering the words pencil, paper, typewriter, stationary, or laptop again or risk assault and battery charges. Putting pencil to pad or iPad again should end with life imprisonment in a Siberian prison cell with a starving Bengal tiger. I don't want Barris doodling , I don't want him stenciling, sketching, or tracing, I don't want him near a stamp, because it might mean hes written something. This movie was bad. Its plot is muddled, its dialogue stiff, its plot points all over the place. So, Akeems father Jaffe Joffer is dying and wants him to “man up" by finding his recently discovered son by way of a shaman?? Now nevermind the final lessons of the original suggest this to be a bit off course for Akeem and Jaffe, its how we get them here. The sudden roll in role gives James Earl Jones none of that warm silly pompous regality he had in the first one, and fills it with some rather not funny bile and rigidity. The movie trudges on as Akeem goes out of his way to “man up” even though the entire original suggests he was not tied to being his father’s son, and rather rebellious if not in a passive aggressive fashion. To have this sort of change we would need to know more about what has happened since but this movie is not interested in that at all (more on that later). A nearby despot/general (Wesley Snipes) wants to attack Zamunda and by extension Akeem because he is not “man enough”, but believes by marrying off one of his heirs that will solve this? How and why if his entire nation is starving and on the brink of collapse as the movie suggest is he such a threat??? Large shrug*. When Coming 2 America is not being ridiculously confusing it segues from one aspect of the plot to another clumsily and handles its themes even worse. For a movie about misogyny and patriarchy it handles its female characters poorly, and gives them little to do except be wives, hoes, and badasses. None of which is bad, unless they're almost less than one dimensional, and barely seen, which they are. Worst of all it's not funny and the few parts of it that are funny I suspect - because you can tell by the fashion in which the actors speak - are improvised. It's lessons are corny, its themes are as outdated as it proposes it's characters are, and it's not really in touch with the original in much of any way that isn't connected to that same sort of vile commercial and calculated nostalgia that I talked about before. It never tries to connect us to these characters that we love and know in any way that is interesting, or wants to reframe how we see them, or even add a further compliment to who they are through some sort of growth and evolution. It is merely there to plant them directly from the time that we last saw them with an excuse of a plot for them to be here in the now as if very little has changed (even though we recognize physical changes in them) and say “here don't you remember these guys? You already know the story so here we go”. One of the great lines in the original came from the wonderful Madge Sinclair as a retort to King Joffer when he replied what he can do about years of tradition- “I thought you were the KING!” This could have been a story about how those words lived on, passed on, or were slept off by way of her death but the movie seems very apprehensive to even want to mention her, save for through a tacked on scene about her thoughts at the end that is again CLUMSY. The movie wasn't that long but it felt like it was 3 hours, I fell asleep several times and had to shake myself up and start back from the point in which I had fallen asleep. All the goodwill of the actors ( I believe every last one of them seemed like they enjoyed what they're doing ) is wasted because there's nothing fun about this movie or a very little at least and it's a sad sad tribute and connection to one of the greatest American comedies ever. Thing is I do actually like the story or the idea of a story that asked some of the things the old said and did to be reconsidered, and to try to bring these characters into an age they might feel disconnected with and thusly themselves. How awesome it might have been if the movie spent equal time showing (outside of just fighting) how ready and prepared his daughter Meeka (Kiki Layne wasted) already was to be Queen of Zamunda. To give her more of an innerstory, to show her wants and longings, desires and characteristics right alongside the clear foolishness in trying to groom a son he barely knew into being king. What if what happens to Vanessa Bell Calloway isnt further made into a pretty horrible and not funny joke and was instead both funny and a commentary on the socio political hypocrisy at play in Akeem and Zamunda? What if the movie didn't waste so much time being ad hawking hub for Crown Royal McDonald's and Ciroc and instead put that time into developing a story about how Zamundas policies hurt and harmed its neighbors and maybe fed off them, who knows, these are just ideas, but the movie throws away possibilities for something both funny and lingering if not at least entertaining for something dumb and worser still boring. The way it plays out leaves room for other installments of this…and sweet baby Jesus I hope not. I just want them to let this go. I want them to never ever breathe on that movie again just please let us remember it as it was.. this has done enough damage.
