Coming 2 America Parent Guide

On his first trip to New York, Prince Akeem Joffer (Eddie Murphy) found the woman of his dreams, Lisa (Shari Headley). Now he’s back with a different goal: to seek the illegitimate son he didn’t know he had and bring him home to Zamunda. Finding him turns out to be simple enough. The boy, Lavelle Junson (Jermaine Fowler) is still living in Queens with his mother, Mary (Leslie Jones). Akeem convinces them to come with him, but now a whole new set of problems arise, namely, forcing Lavelle to take a series of grueling tests to prove his princely worth. Before the prince-to-be can even start on them, he finds himself in an arranged marriage with Bopoto (Teyana Taylor), the daughter of General Izzi (Wesley Snipes), leader of the neighboring military dictatorship of Nextdoria. As his duties pile up, Lavelle starts to wonder if he shouldn’t have just stayed in Queens…

There is a long list of reasons not to watch this movie. First, and most fundamentally detrimental to the film, is the lack of any comedy. Comedy is a typical requirement of the genre, and its absence has a pretty withering effect. What “jokes” there are in the film tend to be distasteful. Topics range from offensive stereotypes of Africa to excessively transphobic references. Not that the content issues stop there: there are frequent (and grotesque) sexual references which make Coming 2 America thoroughly unsuitable for family viewing. There’s also a fair amount of swearing, although admittedly less than I feared.

I don’t know why director Craig Brewer bothered to bring this film in at a PG-13 level. I doubt the original audience of the 1988 R-rated comedy would be much bothered by a stronger rating, and I similarly doubt that a younger audience is going to have the requisite nostalgia to slog through nearly two hours of this exhausting garbage. Frankly, from what I’ve seen of the original, I’m shocked that anybody wanted to watch that one in the first place, let alone a sequel. Moreover, fans of the original are probably not going to go buck wild for what is functionally an unfunny and repugnant retooling of The Princess Diaries 2.

As a critic, I’ve sat through some truly terrible movies in my time. It’s an occupational hazard, and I’m more or less comfortable with that risk. But this is so aggressively bad that I don’t think there’s any way to compensate me for the enduring agony that is this movie. I think the director should be brought in front of the International Criminal Court to answer to charges of cruel and unusual treatment. Forget good taste: if you have an ounce of survival instinct in your body, do whatever it takes to avoid watching Coming 2 America. Trust me, you really don’t want to watch the scene that involves a necklace of mummified foreskins. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go pour a few gallons of bleach on my optic nerve and hope that will remove that particular image from my brain. Wish me luck.