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Coming to America 2 Review

The Parker Perspective

By Nicole P.Published about a year ago 5 min read
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Warning: This will have major spoilers. Do not read if you have not watched the sequel.

By Jose Aragones on Unsplash

The original 1988 Coming to America is a timeless romantic comedy filled with catch phrases and punch lines from characters we will never forget. Sometimes a movie just gets it so RIGHT when talks of a sequel is mentioned we automatically shoot it down because nothing could top the original right?

Coming to America is/was one of those movies. This movie is so legendary and stans for the culture that if you haven’t seen it your figurative black card might be revoked! I’ve watched this movie no less then 100 times so trust me when I say I love this movie. So was I happy about a sequel coming out? To be honest I was torn.

Now after seeing it I’m still torn but I will say for a fact the sequel did not live up to the original and I’ll be happy to explain why, here is the Parker Perspective.

The Good

Let’s start on a high note:

1. The movie brought back the original cast (all who they could). Being that this movie is over 30 years old to bring back so many of the original cast was nostalgic in itself.

2. The shout out to Trading Places was unexpected but a wonderful surprise. If you remember in Trading Places Eddie Murphy’s character, Billy Ray Valentines, assisted in bankrupting Randolph and Mortimer Duke. In Coming to America Akeem gives a homeless man his “pocket change” which was a bag of money, those homeless men turn out to be Randolph and Mortimer who explain “we’re back” when seeing the amount of cash given to them. And now finally in C2A2 we meet Calvin Duke, the grandson of Randolph Duke, when Lavelle, Akeems son, is interviewing for D&D Digital.

3. Wesley Snipes. I’m a fan so while his character had its high and lows (and I do mean lows) I enjoyed seeing him in action once again.

4. Teyana Taylor. I thought she was a great choice for this role. Plus it’s Teyana Taylor, enough said.

5. Meeka, Akeem’s eldest daughter, was a breath of fresh air. She played her role well in each scene and I felt that she was Zamundian, (if that’s a word lol) all of the daughters really but especially Meeka.

6. The makeup, attire, and grooming was all in line with the original. It was beautifully done...can y’all see how hard I’m trying to come up with some positives here!

Ok I’m done.

The Bad

1. I absolutely hated the story line. I mean really? Akeem, the Prince, essentially gets date raped and impregnates a woman no one knows about until Baba has a vision 30 YEARS LATER? Umm where were your antennas when all this happened (in my Katt Williams voice). And Semmi just let THE PRINCE get raped so he could get laid? Really...really...really? My version of a better storyline goes like this: Prince Akeem slept with his bathers (hinted at in the original) and one of them gets pregnant. In order to hide the pregnancy under order of the King she gets sent to America and agrees not to return and in exchange she’ll be taken care of. Because Akeem didn’t have any male heirs his father on his deathbed tells Akeem the truth about his son. BOOM!

2. Why did we have to repeat so many of the classic one liners? I understand this is the sequel but it didn’t need to follow the same script. It was hilarious in the first one but this time a lot of the jokes fell flat.

3. Was I watching Coming to America 2 or a Bootleg Black Panther. One thing I LOVED about Black Panther was Wakanda was Wakanda, it had its own style and swagg. Even when the Erik character emerges the music, his style, his dress all was authentically his. But in this there was a awkward merging of Zamunda and America before the movie even began in the opening music. And throughout the movie it was like Africa imitating Western culture when Africa is too rich in its own culture to ever need help. In some scenes people had accents, in others they didn’t, in some scenes we are acting like a 70s pimp instead of a General. I mean character development was all over the place.

4. Predictability, unfortunately when you follow the same script from the original it makes it pretty easy to guess what’s gonna happen next.

5. Imani oh Imani. We all remember how Imani hopped out the door barking like a dog (a big dog) in the original C2A. How many of us really thought 30 years later she would still be hopping and barking. Come onnnnnn! You telling me she obeyed a man she never married for 30 years, even after he got married and had kids? No one gave Bopoto (Teyana Taylor, Levelles future wife) that message because she stood there for an hour at his direction but she wasn’t standing there the next day waiting for him. SHE WENT HOME! She didn’t have to be released from “his command” like she was under some spell. UGH

6. Why was Salt n Peppa, Morgan Freeman, En Vogue, Gladys Knight, and Mutombo in this movie?

7. The funeral could have been a lot better if they hadn’t filled it with random singing performances

Sigh, I could go on but I don’t want to. I’ll sum it up this way; to have a great sequel after all these years it needs to be able to stand on its own, with its own merit. This movie does not, it is simply Coming to America 2.

To put it in perspective think about the movie Best Man, 1999 and it’s sequel Best Man Holiday, 2013. True, not the same amount of time had passed but that movie was so beautifully done from the intro that gave us a summary of the original while reintroducing the characters as they were and now as they are. It was perfect. The movie built on the classic it didn’t duplicate it. It threw in a couple one liners from the original but it had its own impact. New storyline, characters continued in their development, and it wasn’t predictable! If you’re going to make a sequel after so many years have passed THAT is the way to do it, not this way.

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About the Creator

Nicole P.

Writing has always been my release thank you for reading my heART.

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