Film Review

Coming 2 America (2021)

King Akeem learns he has a long-lost son in the US and must return to New York City to build a relationship with his heir.

Sequels with long gaps between them sound like a risk, but many working out fine (Mad Max: Fury Road, Toy Story 3, Blade Runner 2049). However, that’s less true of comedy hits, with Dumb and Dumber To (2014) a recent example of the difficulty in making audiences laugh when culture’s changed and actors have aged. Most comedies take place in the normal world, so it’s often the case that a concept that worked once feels out of place more than seven years later. Coming 2 America is the follow-up to Coming to America (1988), so an extraordinary 33 years has passed since Eddie Murphy’s late-1980s blockbuster.

Luckily, Coming to America’s concept of an African prince travelling to New York City to search for a bride is one that can be approached from a different angle. Coming 2 America finds Akeem (Murphy) as the newly-crowned King of Zamunda, looking for a male heir rather than a bride, which takes him back to the Big Apple once he’s told he has an illegitimate son…