All Hail: Coming 2 America Reigns

After years of anticipation, a 1980s comedy classic finally gets a sequel

COVID has upended every aspect of life this past year, including where and how we watch our movies. Even when theatres have been open, film-lovers have been skittish about attending, which has left studios hesitant to release their big tentpole flicks. As a result, some have seen their release dates pushed back indefinitely, while others have been made available for at-home rental, typically for around 30 bucks a pop.

Then, there’s Coming 2 America. The long-awaited sequel to Eddie Murphy’s hit 1988 comedy was sold to Amazon by original distributor Paramount for a reported US$125 million, and will now have its world premiere on the streaming service instead of at the multiplex.

With much of its original cast returning, the film picks up with Prince Akeem (Murphy) three decades after his visit to New York City, as he, his wife Lisa (Shari Headley) and their three daughters prepare to take the reins of the fictional African nation of Zamunda from an ailing King Jaffe (James Earl Jones). Unbeknownst to Akeem, however, during that fateful trip to the Big Apple, before he met Lisa, a drunken one-night stand produced a son named Lavelle (Jermaine Fowler). It’s a revelation that sends our hero and his pal Semmi (Arsenio Hall) back to Queens to find the young man and bring him to Zamunda to embrace his birthright as the crown prince.

A few new faces added to the mix include Wesley Snipes as Akeem’s rival, General Izzi, and SNL‘s Leslie Jones as Lavelle’s outrageous mom. Meanwhile, taking the baton from original director John Landis is Craig Brewer, who recently directed Murphy in the hit Netflix comedy Dolemite Is My Name. Here, the filmmaker had to walk a tricky line between paying homage and evolving the story.

“It’s the thing that I think, on a day-to-day basis, was my job: to kind of be a little bit of a referee as to what from the original are we going to do a nod to, and how much are we going to move away from that?” Brewer says. “I learned a lot about that on the remake of Footloose that I did—what’s the reason to tell it now? And I felt there was a great opportunity narratively that it’s more than 30 years later. If it was just a couple of years after Coming to America, I don’t know if the characters would have gone through any change… Once Prince Akeem becomes King Akeem, he’s going to be dealing with more problems. So as much as I can say there’s definitely Easter Eggs, there’s nods to the original, we wanted to move the story forward.”

One thing that remains the same: the film is a true showcase for the unique and oft-underrated talents of its leading man.

“Eddie is a great actor,” the director notes. “I think that a lot of us that have been his fans over the years have been saying that he’s been robbed of awards, because I think that people think that what he does is easy—and somehow drama is always going to trump comedy.”

That said, as much as the first film was a wacky laugh riot, its value for many viewers extended beyond chuckles. It certainly had a profound effect on new cast member Fowler growing up.

“Dude, the original Coming to America opened so many doors,” says the 32-year-old actor, best known for CBS sitcom Superior Donuts. “It was the first of its kind. It was a Black fairy tale that was told with the same gravity you’d tell a white fairy tale. We never saw Black people like that before. Before Black Panther—Coming to America, man! I feel like, at that time, you only saw Africans and Black Americans in one way. You saw Africans as poor and disenfranchised. Then you saw Coming to America and you were like, ‘Wow, this movie is different.’ It’s unapologetically Black. It celebrates Blackness. It has a different perspective on what Blackness should be respected as.”

Fowler further explains that one of the real joys of this sequel for hardcore fans is getting to be immersed in the “mythos and culture” of Zamunda, which the first movie only gave us a fleeting glimpse of before moving the action to New York. As for whether or not Coming 2 America as a whole will live up to its legendary predecessor, Fowler seems optimistic. “You’ve gotta respect the fans, and a lot of folks [who do reboots] don’t understand that. This movie understands that. Eddie, Arsenio, Shari, John Amos, Louie Anderson—everybody came back, because they understood what the original meant and how much they mean to the sequel. With their guidance, we were pointed in the right direction.”

Coming 2 America begins streaming Friday, March 5th on Amazon Prime