If you're going to take an iconic American comedy (to this day one of my favorites) and serve up a sequel that nobody asked for 30 years later, you'd better make it amazing. Coming 2 America wasn't even close.
The writing was listless and uneven; it's clear that they expected nostalgia, Eddie, and Arsenio to do the work the writers wouldn't, to the extent that about five or six minutes of this movie is actually just footage from the original. But even returning to the My-T-Sharp (where we didn't spend enough time) and hanging out with the ever-messy Randy Watson wasn't able to save this.
Starting off by playing what might have been a sexual assault for laughs, rolling right into the messy colorist dynamic from the original (the light-skinned woman is elegant, demure, and desirable, while the dark-skinned woman is trashy, sexually aggressive, and undesirable -- they've just swapped out Allison Dean's Patrice with Leslie Jones's Mary), and jumping into a half-baked plot that isn't helped by the fact that Akeem's newly discovered son Lavelle isn't as charming or well-developed as Akeem was. Also, the writers forgot that one reason the original worked was giving us a chance to laugh at America's craziness through an outsider's eyes. Seeing Zamunda and Nexdoria through familiar eyes doesn't work at all, partially because the writers never bother to develop those countries beyond a pile of African stereotypes (and they look even worse now in comparison to Wakanda). I also will never understand why they went the PG-13 route; the original was R and the difference is palpable.
The solution to the male heir law is obvious within the first 15 minutes, and the way it's eventually handled is just frustrating; Akeem's amazing daughter gaining the throne only because her goof of a newfound brother abdicates doesn't feel right; it would have been a wack ending in 1995 and it's even worse in 2021. Some aspects of the script feel about 30 years old, and not in a good way. And after you spend nearly two hours plodding through this reboot, you'll feel every one of those 30 years. Just watch the original.
The writing was listless and uneven; it's clear that they expected nostalgia, Eddie, and Arsenio to do the work the writers wouldn't, to the extent that about five or six minutes of this movie is actually just footage from the original. But even returning to the My-T-Sharp (where we didn't spend enough time) and hanging out with the ever-messy Randy Watson wasn't able to save this.
Starting off by playing what might have been a sexual assault for laughs, rolling right into the messy colorist dynamic from the original (the light-skinned woman is elegant, demure, and desirable, while the dark-skinned woman is trashy, sexually aggressive, and undesirable -- they've just swapped out Allison Dean's Patrice with Leslie Jones's Mary), and jumping into a half-baked plot that isn't helped by the fact that Akeem's newly discovered son Lavelle isn't as charming or well-developed as Akeem was. Also, the writers forgot that one reason the original worked was giving us a chance to laugh at America's craziness through an outsider's eyes. Seeing Zamunda and Nexdoria through familiar eyes doesn't work at all, partially because the writers never bother to develop those countries beyond a pile of African stereotypes (and they look even worse now in comparison to Wakanda). I also will never understand why they went the PG-13 route; the original was R and the difference is palpable.
The solution to the male heir law is obvious within the first 15 minutes, and the way it's eventually handled is just frustrating; Akeem's amazing daughter gaining the throne only because her goof of a newfound brother abdicates doesn't feel right; it would have been a wack ending in 1995 and it's even worse in 2021. Some aspects of the script feel about 30 years old, and not in a good way. And after you spend nearly two hours plodding through this reboot, you'll feel every one of those 30 years. Just watch the original.