Blu-ray Disc/DVD REVIEW |
Coming To America Special Collector’s Edition   Studio: Paramount Film Year: 1988 Film Length: 116 min Genre: Comedy Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 BD Resolution: 1080p BD Video Codec: MPEG-4 AVC @ over 30MBPS Colour/B&W: Colour Audio: |
Release Date: June 5, 2007 Film Rating:  / Starring: Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, James Earl Jones, John Amos, Madge Sinclair, Shari Headley Story by: Eddie Murphy Screenplay by: David Sheffield and Barry W. Blaustein Directed by: John Landis Coming to America is a fun comedy, really a romantic comedy once it gets going, that gives us a glimpse into the heyday of Eddie Murphy’s career back in the 80s. The film follows Murphy and Arsenio Hall as an African Prince and his servant who venture to New York in search of a bride. The movie is slow going at first, but picks up once the guys are on the streets of the Big Apple and the pieces fall into place. The prince’s adventures in New York primarily happen in a low-rent area of Queens populated by a score of characters, many of whom are played by Murphy and Hall in various states of prosthetic makeup. In spite of the rough language heard throughout and a few moments of nudity early on, this is actually a fairly sweet film that simply tells the story of Cinderella in reverse. Murphy and Hall have a lot of fun here, but they are at their best when playing the various character roles on the periphery of the film. The film is also a fun place to spot actors who rose to fame shortly afterward, including Samuel L. Jackson, Eriq La Salle and Louie Anderson. Coming To America was previously released on standard DVD in 1999 in a bare-bones edition. Paramount has now re-issued the film as a Special Collector’s Edition in standard format, as well as well as HD-DVD and the Blu-Ray edition seen for this review. The Blu-Ray edition presents a 1080p transfer, as well as all the special features of the new standard DVD, which are presented in standard definition aside from the theatrical trailer. The new transfer is beautiful to behold, particularly in the African scenes where the art direction and the costumes have colors and textures that are truly lovely. Once the action moves to New York, there’s less for the transfer to do, but the textures are still on display in full detail and in some scenes, the picture is stunning. If you are a fan of Eddie Murphy, you will definitely enjoy this film. If you haven’t seen it before, the Blu-Ray disc is a great place to start.  VIDEO QUALITY: 4.5/5  Coming to America is presented in a beautiful 1080p MPEG-4 AVC transfer that is full of color, from the accurate flesh tones to the textured costumes on display. One costume in particular benefits from this new transfer. When we are introduced to Shari Headley’s character, she wears a patterned suit jacket with a decorative flower that matches the jacket pattern. With the 1080p transfer, this kind of detail comes through brilliantly. The textures of the various wardrobes are also finely detailed – It is easy to tell the quality of the suits and casual clothes worn by the Prince as opposed to the many civilians he encounters. At the same time, Rick Baker’s heavy prosthetic makeup stands up under the increased resolution and shows more shadings and detail as Murphy and Hall pop up in the various bonus cameos. One exception to the rule, however, causes me to once again take back half a star, as I did on the Trading Places review. The detail is SO good that the film’s establishing flyover and static shot of the Zamunda Royal Palace makes the palace painting look even more two-dimensional than was clearly intended by John Landis. The point of the shot is that we are looking at a fairy tale palace to suit the fairy tale story, but it is still quite jarring to see an almost cartoon-styled painting in the middle of a real setting. So I have taken back the half-star in complaint. Other than that, the transfer is great. As I have noted, the amount of colors and details to show really drops off once we get to Queens, but there are still some fine details to be seen here and the transfer makes the most of them. AUDIO QUALITY: 4/5 Coming To America is presented in a 640kbps 5.1 Surround mix in English with lesser mixes in French (2.0) and Spanish (Mono). The English mix is solid, with a lot of directional sound effects and voices throughout the film. One scene where Eddie Murphy walks down the neighbourhood street at 2AM, singing the praises of his new love, is delightfully decorated with voices coming at us from all sides demanding that he “SHUT THE @#$@@#$ UP!!!!” The music is present in the surround channels at regular intervals throughout the film, allowing Nile Rodgers score to ride through the film with the viewer in a pleasant but unobtrusive way. This really isn’t a film that makes use of any LFE that I could tell at first viewing. There may have been some subtler effects, particularly with the music, but this is not a movie or a mix about massive atmospheric effects. As a simple romantic comedy, the mix serves the film well – with dialogue sent clearly to the front channels and the effects and other voices distributed throughout all 5 main speakers. SPECIAL FEATURES: 3/5 The Blu-Ray presentation of Coming To America includes all of the special features (totaling about an hour and fifteen minutes) to be found on the standard DVD edition, and almost all of them are presented in non-anamorphic standard format. The only exception to this is the theatrical trailer.
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