About eleven months ago or so, I was bored and decided to make a big list of 200 movies I have never seen before. Here is the list. Below is the next movie on that list, and what I have to say about it.
Coming to America
1988
I used to run into this problem all the time in my The Albums That Matter column—the constraints of working through the list alphabetically can occasionally provide a less-than-ideal viewing order. With Coming to America, my thought is: as someone who is not necessarily familiar with Eddie Murphy's filmography, was this the right film to start with?
Probably not. If I was committed to "understanding Eddie Murphy," then maybe I would start with Beverly Hills Cop (one of those movies that I was surprised didn't end up on the list, looking back). Maybe I should watch Eddie Murphy Raw (not a movie, but still, it's the most popular taped stand-up performance of all time). Maybe I should work my way through the Shrek series (I've watched the first one 67 times the past month, but haven't seen any of the numerous sequels, as far as I remember). Maybe I should watch Stephan perform "Party All the Time" at karaoke (god, remember karaoke?!).
There is a thrill in knowing an actor to be one thing, and then to see him knock that perception down completely and surprise you with something new and equally exciting, and I think by watching the latter first, you're robbed of that experience. Plus, to say that Eddie Murphy's performance in Coming to America was the best thing about the movie means nothing coming from me, since the only thing I have to compare it to is his performance as a cartoon donkey and his flatulent performance in multiple fat suits.
And maybe this really is all because I haven't seen many Eddie Murphy vehicles and have made some bad assumptions, but I was absolutely thrilled at the notion of him giving an honest and grounded performance. Especially because these types of movies—the "stranger in a strange land" comedy—are usually centered around a bumbling, outrageous, and obnoxious fool. Picture Borat trying to use a fax machine or whatever. I just assumed that Coming to America, which is about an African Prince (Murray) coming to America to find his one true love, was going to feature a main character closer to Ace Ventura.
Because that's easy, right? At least for comedies. Repulsive obnoxiousness—maybe a character like Ron Burgundy—is easy for cheap laughs. But to have your main protagonist be a largely educated, well-mannered, a good-hearted member of royalty is a bigger challenge. And can you blame me for assuming that the Klump didn't have it in him? That's what happens when you are ignorant and you try to write on a blog about your ignorance.
So if anything, I loved Coming to America because I was afraid it was going to be exactly the type of comedy that I hate, and it ended up being... well, not that. I guess you could call it a relief more so than anything else.
It's not even like my perceptions of Eddie Murphy as a comedian were completely reshaped by this film. Consider too the fact that, not only does he play the wonderfully winning lead in Prince Akeem, Murphy also plays the frontman of the fictional band Sexual Chocolate, an outspoken barber shop owner, and a Jewish senior citizen patron of said barber shop (the latter in white face, making Murphy completely unrecognizable). I could see Murphy playing Clarence the Barber Shop Owner as a lead character in another movie, and that would be a movie I would absolutely detest. Clarence is basically a older black Ace Ventura, and y'all know how I felt about that.
Clarence and the other secondary Murphy performances were only a small fraction of Coming to America, however. Closer to cameo than supporting role, honestly. My theory is that Murphy's primary comedic speed is absolute mania, it's first-gear for him, and so he needed these secondary roles in the movie to act as sort of a pressure valve. He needs to yell at high volumes and high speeds in funny voices, and by confining that grating behavior to bit parts, he was able to just let it all out and then use the remaining calmness and humility in his main role. Would I watch a movie starring Clarence the barber? FUCK no. But would I watch a movie that features his rabid ranting around the edges, which allows the center to still hold? I just did, and it was pretty great.
Okay, I don't want to go overboard with the praise. This was a very good comedy. It was probably held back from being GREAT by its predictability. As soon as the premise is laid out—a prince wants a woman to love him for who he is, and decides to find that woman in Queens—then you can already guess where it's all headed. You know that Prince Akeem is going to find a great girl, that he'll have to win her despite the obstacle of her shitty boyfriend, that they will fall in love, that they will fall apart due to some misunderstanding, and that by the end, they'll be married. Nothing about the plot of Coming to America is surprising.
However, if there were indeed no large-scale surprises in terms of structure or plot, then there were plenty of tiny surprises littered throughout the movie that made Coming to America a funny one, scene-to-scene at least. I cracked up a lot more at the subtle touches around the margins—like when a baby elephant interrupts a conversation and everyone finds that to be normal, or like Prince Akeem calmly asking to wipe his own ass, or James Earle Jones getting excited about fucking his bath maid. Me and Pam were fucking dying at the tiny little bit when Akeem gifts Lisa expensive earrings and writes on the note "from your secret admirer... not Darryl." The final two words of the note are just a fucking masterclass of genius in subtlety.
I wonder how much that has to do with director John Landis. Landis also directed Animal House, and I see a lot of a similar type of humor—not so much content, but more so how it's delivered. Understated, deadpanned, humble, however you want to describe it. I'm sure the praise can be passed around—the director, the actors, maybe even Paula Abdul, who choreographed the big dance scene a few minutes into the film.
But that would require me to watch more movies—more Eddie Murphy movies, more John Landis movies, etc.—and I'm trying! But it's a long process! And it's a lot tougher when you have alphabetical constraints!
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Sequel
This will never happen again in the Never Seen It series, so let's appreciate this coincidence while it's here. Within 24 hours of this blog post's publishing, a SEQUEL will be released for the movie we are discussing. Yes, folks, Coming 2 America is coming to Amazon Prime tomorrow, March 5, 2021, almost 33 years after the original.
This is an almost unbelievable coincidence. I swear to god I had no idea that a new Coming to America film was coming out the same week I planned on watching the original. It actually caused a little bit of confusion in our household. First, Pam told me that "Coming to America is gonna be streaming on Amazon soon." But she didn't see the "2" instead of a "to" in the title. So the next piece of confusion was me assuming that Coming 2 America had come out in the 1990s or whatever. I had assumed that, like a lot of these older comedies, a sequel was pumped out quickly as a money-maker (which was itself confusing because then why is Amazon advertising a movie that came out in the '90s?). Nope, didn't realize until right before we watched Coming to America that Coming 2 America was a brand new movie. Confusion #3 was why Amazon Prime would show a preview to a sequel right before screening the original movie. Spoilers, yo!!!!
Anyways, Coming 2 America, like most comedy sequels, sounds pretty awful—now it's Akeem's son who has the yearning heart, you see. But I'm only assuming that it's bad from reading any brief description I could find online, and we see what happened, with Coming to America, when I make assumptions. Sometimes, I find out that the movie is infinitely better than what I had ignorantly assumed. Not sure if I'm going to watch it, but it's definitely funny that we are discussing it at all.
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GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5 (I give this grade out a lot, I realize. I'm sorry, but also, I just mostly really like movies for the most part, and am rarely disgusted or ecstatic about them.)
NEXT TIME: Not mentioned above was that Eddie Murphy honed a lot of his typical shtick on Saturday Night Live, but when we watch Coneheads, mentioning my least favorite TV show of all time will probably be unavoidable.
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