Coming to America really shouldn’t hold up as well as it does. With its African setting and costuming, the movie is susceptible to contemporary charges of cultural appropriation. With its scenes of Eddie Murphy, under Rick Baker makeup effects, portraying an ostensibly Jewish kvetcher, I suppose it engages in whiteface. And for all the enlightenment of its plot—about an African prince turning down a submissive, assigned bride in order to seek out an independent woman “who will arouse my intellect as well as my loins”—there is an extended, gratuitous topless scene only a couple of minutes in. And yet, the movie has an undeniable sweetness to it that belies all that (as well as its R rating).
Murphy stars as Akeem, prince of Zamunda, who travels with his best friend Semmi (Arsenio Hall) to seek true love in the most logical (to him) of places: Queens. Murphy and Hall have surprisingly little comic chemistry, lending most of their energy to the many makeup-assisted supporting turns they both indulge in. (Murphy also plays a barbershop owner and a washed-up soul singer; Hall plays one of the barbershop customers, a roof-raising preacher, and—in another problematic touch—a husky-voiced woman who propositions both Semmi and Akeem at a bar.)
Far from the chaotic clown prince he was a few years earlier in Beverly Hills Cop, Murphy this time leads with his trademark smile and an irrepressible geniality, making Akeem more of a genuine sweetheart. When he and Semmi take jobs at a McDonald’s knock-off called McDowell’s (one of the film’s better jokes), Akeem falls for the owner’s smart and accomplished daughter, Lisa (Shari Headley). Once her chauvinistic, jheri-curled boyfriend (Eriq La Salle) is pushed out of the way, Coming to America nearly develops into a 1980s romantic comedy.
Aside from La Salle, who would go on to be an earnest anchor of television’s E.R., the movie features James Earl Jones’ bullfrog smile as Akeem’s imperious father and king of Zamunda; a fully formed Samuel L. Jackson, who brings a shotgun and f bombs into McDowell’s; and an extremely funny John Amos as Cleo McDowell, who goes on and on about how different his restaurant is from McDonald’s, even as he pores over the franchise giant’s management manuals in his office.
If the movie itself is baggy—director John Landis (The Blues Brothers) doesn’t find nearly enough jokes to fill the two hours—I’m glad time is given to a seemingly superfluous dance procession at the start, in which a coterie of elaborately costumed, gyrating performers usher in Akeem’s would-be bride. Nicely shot and edited, the sequence was choreographed by another breakout star of the 1980s: Paula Abdul.
