Review of Coming to America (1988) by Harry W — 20 Mar 2013

Coming to America is fairly tame by today's standards, but it's not without comedic charm and Eddie Murphy'a iconic skill at making us laugh and playing several characters distinguishably.

Coming to American begins the same as many other Eddie Murphy'a comedies: A story of a man who wants to explore a part of the world he doesn't understand.

As it expands, it takes a look at America from the perspective of a superior foreigner. This has weaknesses and strengths in Coming to America, because Eddie Murphy is funniest when he's in a quick-speaking confident wise guy role, and so making Prince Akeem Joffer a character forced to hold his own on screen for so long when the funnier characters are the wise-cracking barbershop dudes, it makes the funniest moments in the film airtime too brief for their own good.

Eddie Murphy does supply a good lead performance though, and his ability to hilariously play so many separable characters is one of the iconic things about Coming to America. What matters is that there was a reasonable amount of laughs in there, and there was thanks to Eddie Murphy.

Arsenio Hall was funny as well when he played multiple characters. As Semmi, it just seemed as if he was along for the ride, but otherwise he was good.

I also enjoyed John Amos' performance.

Coming to America doesn't reach the same level of comedy as many other Eddie Murphy films, and the main plot has a few many cliches and an unsurprising conclusion. It also doesn't really provide Eddie Murphy with a strong lead character so it's all him holding his own, but Coming to America was alright and had good moments, and really that's all that matters.