Arsenio Hall and Eddie Murphy star in Coming 2 America.
Photo: Quantrell D. Colbert / Paramount Pictures
Thirty-three years have passed since the launch of Coming to America – is as old as Rihanna, Zac Efron, Blake Lively and Kendrick Lamar – so making a sequel would seem like a complicated business, requiring a high-tension act to satisfy fans of the original while bringing in younger viewers who may not have known the previous film in everything.
The creators of Coming 2 America try to do both simultaneously, inserting the new character of Lavelle, the “bastard prince” (Jermaine Fowler), to provide a protagonist under the age of 30, as in such “legacyquels” as Belief and Star Wars The Force Awakens. But screenwriters Barry W. Blaustein and David Sheffield (and new collaborators Kenya Barris and Justin Kanew) are also hard on the superfans, filling the image not only with flashbacks of the original, but with lots of feedback from their jokes – parts that, like Bilge Ebiri says: “It will literally make zero sense to anyone who hasn’t seen the first film recently.” So, if you didn’t, here’s your glue sheet.
Ebiri notes that “it doesn’t look like the filmmakers wrote a new script, but just … rewrote the old script,” and he is not wrong; in terms of beat-by-beat replication, we’re getting into Hangover Part II territory here:
• The film opens again as it passes the iconic Paramount mountain to reveal the African nation of Zamunda behind it, the camera sliding and rolling across fields and valleys as we hear a version of “Mbube”, the original version of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight. “
• We landed in the Zamunda palace, where three rose bearers rush to take care of the royal offspring – but this time, instead of Prince Akeem (Eddie Murphy), they are his three daughters.
• They then run to their parents, Akeem and Lisa (Shari Headley), to wish them a happy birthday. “This It is our anniversary, ”he exclaims happily, echoing his reading of“ It It is my birthday ”at the opening of the original film.
• A short time later, Akeem engages in an animated round of baton fighting – this time with his daughters instead of Semmi (Arsenio Hall).
• After Akeem (now Rei Akeem) and Semmi decide to travel to Queens, we hear the title song again as they arrive – but sung by John Legend. (The legend reappears in the closing credits to sing the star of the 1988 Oha show, “She is your queen”.)
• In one of the main structural deviations, the number of music and dance in the grand palace appears around the 40-minute mark, and not at the beginning. (In addition, Paula Abdul did not choreograph this one.)
• But this sequence sets up the replication of the original film’s central romantic conflict: just like her father, Lavelle shies away from a politically convenient arranged marriage with a neighboring princess to pursue her genuine attraction to a more “ordinary” girl, Mirembe (Nomzamo Mbatha ).
• And again, the furious king follows his son back to Queens to track him down and end this nonsense – but of course, when your son explains that he has to follow his heart, he understands.
• The first film ended with a memorable post-credit scene (pre-Marvel!) By Saul (the elderly Jewish kibitzer barber shop, played by Murphy under layers of makeup) telling his favorite joke. So we have a post-credit scene with Saul here too, alongside Hall’s new secondary character, Baba, the sorcerer.
But they don’t just copy the structure of the first film; several lines of dialogue are repeated, often literally. To know:
• “Defend yourself, your sweat on a baboon’s balls”: said by Semmi to Akeem in his sparring session in the first film, and to General Izzi (Wesley Snipes) during the big fight in this one.
• Izzi’s sister, Imani (Vanessa Bell Calloway) is still jumping on one leg and barking like a dog, as Akeem ordered her to do at the beginning of the first film. And when your son meets General Izzi’s daughter (Teyana Taylor), they have the conversation that Akeem and Imani had: “What do you like?” “Whatever you want” etc.
• When King Jaffe Joffer (James Earl Jones) arrives in Queens in the first film, Saul rubs his lion skin strip and exclaims, “This is beautiful, what is this, velvet?” The last line of Coming 2 America Saul is asking Baba about his robes: “Hey, what is this, velvet?”
Occasionally, however, writers take the trouble to not just quote themselves, but add and / or blink to their original ideas:
• When Akeem is informed that his illegitimate son was conceived during his journey to Queens, he protests that this is impossible: “I did no sow my royal oats, ”he insists, referring to his father’s original and lively instructions for the trip.
• At the beginning of this conversation in the first film, while he and his father were walking, he greeted a baby elephant with a warm “Hello, Babar”. In the new film, he introduces his son to a large and majestic elephant like “Babar the magnificent! I’ve known him since he was a little elephant. ”(Since the original line was a wink for the children’s book series, this one looks like a hat over another.)
• In the first film, Akeem calls a taxi to the street, raising his hand and ordering: “STOP!” He tries the same trick here – but interrupts a hitchhiking driver, who explains that he needs to call him through the app.
• At the end of the baton fight, Akeem’s daughter, Meeka (KiKi Layne), puts General Izzi on his back in exactly the same way that his father cut Semmi – and director Craig Brewer even reproduces director John Landis’s original framing for action.
• When Akeem and Semmi return to Queens, they are surprised at how clean the gentrified neighborhood has been – except for the pristine MY-T-Sharp barbershop. And you can even find a Soul Glo poster in the background.
• The original film had many comics with Akeem’s employer, McDowell’s, who was completely different McDonald’s, according to its owner (John Amos). “They have the Big Mac – I have the Big Mac Mick, ”He insisted. “We both have two beef burgers, sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions. But they use sesame seed bread – my breads have no seeds. ”In the new film, with the debut of a McDowell franchise in Zamunda, he has more differences to explain. “They have Egg McMuffins … we have Egg McMuffins!” he says. “McFlurbly is nothing like McFlurry! We put the covers on the bottom! “
• In a reference to the “seedless” line, when Akeem and Semmi return to Queens, their limo parks under a McDonald’s ad, “CASA DO REAL BIG MAC”, with an arrow pointing to a photo of the burger and the caption, “ with seeds ”.
Coming to America it is not the only film frequently referenced in Coming 2 America. When The Lion King was released in 1994, it looked like its casting department was full of Coming to America fans; not only James Earl Jones provided the voice of King Mufasa, but Madge Sinclair, who co-starred as his Queen Aoleon in America, expressed Queen Sarabi of Mufasa. And then, in Coming 2 America, Murphy & Co. return the favor.
• During the celebration of King Jaffe Joffer’s pre-death funeral, a cameo Morgan Freeman refers to (correctly!) As “the inspiration for Mufasa”.
• This presentation also includes a picture of a child being lifted, the key image of The Lion Kingopening scene and advertising campaign for.
• One of the few new characters, said Baba, the sorcerer, looks terribly similar to The Lion Kingit’s Rafiki.
• When Akeem enters the barbershop in search of his son, Clarence, the barber (also Murphy), greets him cheerfully as “Mufasa!”
• And in yet another wink to James Earl Jones’ extensive body of work, a promotional bumper for Zamunda News Network features Jones intoning, “This is ZNN” – just as he has done for CNN for years.
• Coming to America itself, it presented a clever reference to another previous film – a moment when Akeem hands an envelope with money to two homeless men who sleep under the Brooklyn Bridge. These men are then revealed as Randolph and Mortimer Duke (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche), the wealthy and racist entrepreneurs left in misery at the end of Murphy and Landis’ previous collaboration, Commercial places. This donation apparently worked well for them; in the new film, Lavelle applies for a job at the revitalized Duke & Duke, interviewing Calvin Duke (Colin Jost), Randolph’s grandson.
• In the playful footage from behind the scenes seen during the final credits, Jermaine Fowler sings the songs, “I got the whiskers, they from a lion”, which led Murphy to object: “This is mine thing! “- while Fowler is paying homage to the song” We got some ice cream “by Eddie Murphy: Delusional.
• This is a little more exaggerated, but as Murphy sits on his throne in his royal attire, listening to a presentation of Prince’s “Gett Off”, this viewer suddenly remembered when he did exactly the same thing for Roxo An old rival, Michael Jackson, in the “Remember the Time” video.
• Few sequences have brought together their original casts as completely as Coming 2 America; almost everyone is back, but Eriq La Salle, Samuel L. Jackson and Cuba Gooding Jr. In addition to Murphy, Hall, Headley, Amos, Calloway and James Earl Jones, we have Paul Bates, Clint Smith, Louie Anderson encore, and even Garcelle Beauvais, promoted from “Portadora de Rosa” in the first film to “Priestess Portadora de Rosa” in this one.
• But it’s also kind of a continuation of Murphy’s last star vehicle, Dolemite is my name, reuniting the star with the film’s director (Brewer) and co-star Snipes. And in that post-credit scene, Saul recites “Signifying Monkey”, one of Rudy Ray’s most famous choreographies “Dolemite” Moore.
• AND, since Murphy broke into Saturday Night Live, it’s a little SNL alumni also show, featuring supporting roles and cameos from Leslie Jones, Tracy Morgan and Jost; co-writers Blaustein and Sheffield also started on the program, writing sketches and table pieces for Murphy before writing the scripts for Coming to America, Boomerang, The Nutty Professor, and Professor Nutty II: The Klumps.
• When Lavelle is meeting Mirembe, the subject of cinema arises. He scoffs at her love for American cinema: “What do we have besides superhero shit, remakes and old movie sequences that no one asked for?” And she agrees with the last point: “This is true about sequences. If something is good, why spoil it? ”Nothing like a self-defending film!
• Okay, it might not be funny ha-ha, but it’s important to note that the opening credits include the line “Based on characters created by Eddie Murphy”, but the closing credits include a “Special thanks to Art Buchwald’s estate” and , well, that’s another story.