Com­ing 2 America

In 1988, long before Wakan­da, Com­ing to Amer­i­ca dared to show audi­ences some­thing that Hol­ly­wood nev­er had: African pow­er and wealth. This was the time of Band Aid, when images of a dis­ease-rid­den, war-torn con­ti­nent were rou­tine­ly plas­tered on tele­vi­sion screens across the globe. With its open­ing shots of flaw­less mar­ble floors, ornate dec­o­ra­tions and gold­en robes, Com­ing to Amer­i­ca was noth­ing short of radical.

But despite all its suc­cess­es, the film was far from per­fect. With crit­i­cisms of colourism, sex­ism and lazy stereo­typ­ing often lev­elled against it, Com­ing to Amer­i­ca was in des­per­ate need of updat­ing. When a long-belat­ed sequel was announced, the expec­ta­tion (or at least the hope) was that it would address the flaws of its pre­de­ces­sor. Yet while some of these flaws have been papered over, oth­ers have been deepened.

Thir­ty odd years on from the jubi­la­tions of Prince Akeem (Eddie Mur­phy) and Lisa McDowell’s (Shari Headley) wed­ding, all is not right in Zamun­da. Akeem’s father, the for­mer king, Jaffe Jof­fer (James Earl Jones), is at death’s door; the leader of Nextdo­ria, a mil­i­taris­tic neigh­bour­ing nation, is grow­ing more pow­er­ful and blood­thirsty; and despite hav­ing three excep­tion­al daugh­ters, with no male heir Akeem is in a per­ilous posi­tion. That is, until it comes to light that Akeem does in fact have a son, con­ceived dur­ing his pil­grim­age to Amer­i­ca in a haze of liquor and mar­i­jua­na smoke. In a pre­dictable rever­sal of the orig­i­nal premise, Akeem sets out to bring him back to Africa.

While the first film could have been giv­en for its two-dimen­sion­al ren­der­ing of Africa, the sequel makes no attempt to add depth or nuance to its por­tray­al of the con­ti­nent. In the hands of direc­tors Craig Brew­er and John Lan­dis, Africa remains an absurd pan­tomime of free-roam­ing wildlife and naked ser­vants. As a con­se­quence, the oppor­tu­ni­ty to explore and build upon the world of Zamun­da and its peo­ples has been missed.

Hid­den behind faux-wok­e­ness, the script man­ages to even short-change a lot of its promis­ing female tal­ent. For instance, Lisa (Shari Headley) con­tin­ues her down­ward tra­jec­to­ry from the impas­sioned human­i­tar­i­an who start­ed the first film to the unre­mark­able, shal­low woman who end­ed it; and now the card­board cut-out that floats through this one. But the hard­est done by is Kiki Layne as Akeem’s eldest daugh­ter, Mee­ka, who is denied the chance to become the film’s much-need­ed rebuke to its out­dat­ed patri­ar­chal traditions.

Com­ing 2 Amer­i­ca makes no attempt to con­vince us that it is any­thing oth­er than a cyn­i­cal cash-grab. Billed as a social satire, it falls short of either being humor­ous or clever, opt­ing instead to dress-up old gags in cheap wigs and parade them around as some­thing new. While the orig­i­nal had Murphy’s full charm and vir­tu­osic silli­ness as a sav­ing grace, all the sequel gets is a dull, life­less per­for­mance from him that does lit­tle to redeem its plod­ding, hope­less cause.