Amazon Prime Coming 2 America (2021) (1 Viewer)

[cinemiracle]

James Earl Jones is 90 now. I sure hope he has the opportunity to make at least one more memorable film in a role that suits his talents. This should definitely not be it.

I saw James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer together in OTHELlO many decades ago on Broadway.What great memories.

 

[Jake Lipson]

COMING TO AMERICA a classic?

Lots of people consider it to be one.

This should definitely not be it.

Every actor would like to go out on a creative high. But even if this is it, JEJ's legacy as an iconic entertainer is completely secure. Even if you just counted his voice work without any of his equally good live-action work, Darth Vader and Mufasa will continue to be watched and loved for generations to come. I hope we get as much more as he wants to do, but he can retire any time he likes as one of the most influential actors of all time.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Watched this yesterday and was pretty disappointed.

The sting doesn't hurt so bad when you are not paying $12 to see it in a theater

 

[Bryan^H]

James Earl Jones is 90 now. I sure hope he has the opportunity to make at least one more memorable film in a role that suits his talents. This should definitely not be it.

He looks great for 90. I think he has one more good role left in him.

I thought this film was fine. Obviously not as good as the first, and I don't think it was necessary after all these years, but it was fairly enjoyable, and seeing Eddie, and Arsenio together again was good.

The My-T Sharp crew made me laugh the most, as I thought they would.

 

[John Dirk]

COMING TO AMERICA a classic? You must be joking?

Obviously the designation is subjective. I don't mind at all that you disagree. Perhaps you should practice the same level of courtesy.

 

[SamT]

Re-watched the original last night. It is a timeless classic with lots of lots of laugh.

Watched the sequel tonight. It is obviously no way near the original but I very much liked part of the story. It's none of the comedy parts. I did have a smile from time to time but this movie is not particularly funny. It's over the top and like a parody. The redeeming quality, the strong part for me was the male heir story.

Spoiler

Especially that I'm watching many movies about Henry VIII and Elizabeth I right now, I'm in the right mood for this. Why should he be looking for a male heir while he has 3 daughters? I would have loved to see a more serious tone at the end with the daughter taking command and ordering troops to fend off the enemy instead of doing it herself.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Confession time: I have never seen Coming to America (the original) before tonight. I wasn't born yet when the movie was originally released, and although I could have seen it at some point, it isn't something I had gotten around to before.

I was aware in general that the response to the sequel was mixed but didn't know anything about it and didn't have any preconceived notions about either film.

Amazon recently put the original on Prime as well. So I decided to watch them both back-to-back tonight. Because I have never been attached to the original film and was never anticipating the sequel, I thought I might actually end up more favorable toward it. It didn't have the pressure of my having waited for it for any length of time at all.

I thought the first film was absolutely, completely delightful. I was fully on board with it. The writing was smart, the jokes were funny, the cast was great and the central relationship between Akeem and Lisa was wonderful. It started to falter for me only in the wedding scene at the very end because I felt like we should have seen Akeem and Lisa reconcile prior to the wedding and not have the fake-out that it to do with the surprise reveal of Lisa under the veil. It needed about ten more minutes to give them one more beat together prior to the wedding. However, the rest of the movie was so well-constructed and throughly enjoyable that it was easy to overlook that small issue.

Then I loaded up the sequel. I hadn't seen any footage from this, not even the trailer, so I was going in blank. Like I said, because I had no experience with the first film prior to tonight either, it wasn't like I had any grand hopes for what the next one would be. It still managed to disappoint me on pretty much every level. There's no real way to go into this without spoilers, so here comes the big spoiler tag.

Spoiler

Let's start with the idea that Leslie Jones' character drugged Akeem and date raped him. This is the second new release movie in three months that I've seen with a morally questionable sexual encounter, and it really left a sour taste in my mouth. If the genders were reversed and someone went into Paramount to pitch a comedy in which Eddie Murphy drugged and date raped Leslie Jones, there's no way that would get made. It should not get made. I'm not sure why it was any more acceptable for the man to be the one who is drugged and not consciously consenting. I understand that they didn't want to have Hakeem produce a male heir by cheating on Lisa, because that would have betrayed their love story in the original film. But this wasn't okay either.

I don't think the film needed to bring in the issue of an unknown son either. If they wanted to do a movie in Zamunda with Hakeem, Lisa and their daughters confronting Wesley Snipes, that would work. The stuff with Lavell was the least interesting part of the movie and just felt like a lukewarm rehash of what had been fresher and funnier in the original. Worse, Akeem in particular felt like he was written as a function of the plot needing him to behave a certain way rather than being authentic to the character I had just seen in the first movie. There is no way Hakeem, who clearly loves and respects Lisa for her intellect, wouldn't just change the law to make his daughter his heir as soon as the issue was raised. The first movie ended with James Earl Jones saying that he can't go back on tradition, and Madge Sinclair told him he's king and can just change the law. The same thing applies to Akeem in this movie.

I know that Jones was king until he dies in the beginning of the film, but I don't really buy that they would be married for 30 years without Akeem having already worked to advance for the rights of women in Zamunda. Do we believe that Lisa as written in the first film would tolerate a society where women can't run their own businesses? I also don't believe for a second that Akeem would go to America to get his son and not have told Lisa what was going on before making a decision like that. Obviously, he did, because they wrote him that way, but most of his behavior in this movie feels inconsistent with how he was written 30-something years ago.

Akeem going along with the arranged marriage and not listening to his son or his daughters felt like he was making those choices so the movie's convoluted plot could continue rather than progressing from the original film. When he told Lisa to hold her tongue, I literally gasped. I get that we're not supposed to like what he's doing in this moment and that it is a low point for him, but it still felt like a betrayal of his character's values in the original. Lisa herself doesn't have a lot to do in this film, and I thought that was really unfortunate because I liked her so much in the original.

Plus, the whole movie was just not funny. I laughed so much tonight when watching the first film. I don't think I laughed once in the sequel. There were a lot of lines that were clearly written to get a laugh that landed with a thud and made me roll my eyes instead.

The actors do what they can with the material they are given, but I can't believe they were given something this substandard. It especially shocks me that the original writers were also behind this. Kenya Barris, who has done some really good work with Black-ish, should have been a value add for this project as well. But no matter who wrote what, it didn't work for me. It feels like something where they didn't understand what was so great about the first one and weren't able to get at that magic a second time. I'm not sure how this happened, but it's unfortunate.