Coming to America ** (1988, Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, James Earl Jones, Shari Headley, John Amos) – Classic Movie Review 8806

Director John Landis’s 1988 romantic comedy Coming to America represents a mild return to form for Eddie Murphy, engagingly playing Akeem Joffer, the powerful crown prince of the fictional African nation of Zamunda, who comes to New York to find a bride who will love him for himself and not for his fortune.

This old-fashioned, soft-centred comedy (with a sprinkling of bad language) is very much an Eddie Murphy show. He had a hand in the story and plays several roles – Prince Akeem / Clarence / Saul / Randy Watson. But it is director Landis (reunited with the star after Trading Places) who keeps it on the road.

It co-stars Arsenio Hall, James Earl Jones, Shari Headley and John Amos, and was released in the US on 29 June 1988.

Murphy was credited with the story until the humourist Art Buchwald took legal action in the Buchwald v. Paramount civil suit, filed in 1990 against the film’s producers on the grounds that the film’s idea was stolen from his 1982 script treatment. Buchwald won the breach of contract action and the court ordered monetary damages. The screenplay is by David Sheffield and Barry W Blaustein.

Eddie Murphy plays Prince Akeem Joffer, the prince of Zamunda, Randy Watson, a soul singer with the fictional band Sexual Chocolate, Saul, the Jewish barbershop customer and Clarence, the owner of the barber shop. Arsenio Hall plays Semmi, Akeem’s friend, the Reverend Brown, Morris the barber and Extremely Ugly Girl, an unattractive female clubgoer.

Also in the cast are James Earl Jones as as King Jaffe Joffer, Akeem’s father and King of Zamunda, John Amos, Madge Sinclair, Shari Headley, Paul Bates, Allison Dean, Eriq La Salle, Louie Anderson, Don Ameche, Ralph Bellamy, Calvin Lockhart, Samuel L Jackson as an armed robber at McDowell’s, Cuba Gooding Jr as a boy getting a haircut, Vondie Curtis-Hall as a basketball game vendor, Ruben Hudson as a street hustler and Frankie Faison as the landlord.

Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy reprise their roles as Mortimer and Randolph Duke from Trading Places and part of that film’s score can be heard during their scene.

It was nominated for two Oscars: Best Costume Design (Deborah Nadoolman Landis) and Best Makeup for Rick Baker, who designed the makeup effects for both Murphy’s and Hall’s multiple supporting characters.

Paramount cancelled press screenings after negative reactions to a press screening in New York.

Murphy received a salary of $8 million plus 15 per cent of film rentals, while Landis received $600,000, plus 10 per cent of gross receipts. The budget was $36 million and the box office $350 million.

The two men did not entirely see eye to eye. Landis recalled: ‘The guy on Trading Places was young and full of energy and curious and funny and fresh and great. The guy on Coming to America was the pig of the world. But I still think he’s wonderful in the movie.’ Murphy recalled: ‘We had a tussling confrontation. We didn’t come to blows. Personalities didn’t mesh. I was going out of my way to help this guy, and he fucked me over. Now he’s got a hit picture on his resumé, a movie that made over $200 million, as opposed to him coming off a couple of fucked-up movies.’

Nevertheless Landis and Murphy worked together again six years later on Beverly Hills Cop III.

Hall said Paramount Pictures insisted on having a white actor in the cast, providing a list of three white performers, and Murphy and Hall chose Louie Anderson because they knew and liked him.

The belated 2021 Coming to America sequel Coming 2 America again casts Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, James Earl Jones and Shari Headley and adds Wesley Snipes, KiKi Layne, Leslie Jones and Jermaine Fowler. It was released on 5 March 2021 on the internet by Amazon Prime Video.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8806

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