Coming to America is a classic! While there is some excitement about revisiting the story and characters, there is always the concern that it just won't live up to the original, and worse will slightly dim the shine of the original. As the news kept coming that more and more of the original cast would be returning, excitement grew, but the fear of a flop never fully subsided. It's hard to recreate the magic of classics, especially over three decades later and with a comedy, as comedic taste within the general public is sure to have changed in three decades.
Coming 2 America is no Coming to America, not even close, but it is good in its own right. Unfortunately, it is a sequel. So it has to be compared to the original. Taken by itself, it's pretty good. The first half was way too over the top with forced cameos that just weren't needed. I'm still trying to figure out why the King of Zamunda (James Earl Jones) would want American artists performing at a celebration and no old school African artists. I suppose the film was trying to give us some type of nostalgia for the time period of the original, though technically the artists/songs they chose aren't quite 1988.
The film significantly improved in the latter half of the film. The plot and execution of the plot seemed more thoughtful. It was inching closer to the balance the original struck between comedy and romance that had a bit more of a serious tone than a straight-up rom-com. It never quite reached the level of execution of the original, but it certainly made the film more enjoyable. I also liked that the story took a more realistic and amicable approach to the plotline surrounding the entry of Lavelle (Jermaine Fowler) and his mother (Leslie Jones) into the family. They could have opted for an approach that focused mostly on competition between Lisa and Lavelle's mother and Javelle and Akeem's (Eddie Murphy) oldest daughter, Meeka (Kiki Layne); but instead stayed true to Lisa's character and personality from the original and acknowledged my initial thought, which was Lisa lives in Zamunda now but she's from Queens and can probably appreciate having another woman of similar age from Queens around. So I actually loved what they did with that part of the storyline. It was a pleasant surprise.
One of the things that I surprisingly really liked, like maybe some of my favorite scenes in the film, were actual flashback scenes with clips from the original film. It was a nice touch, though it also was sort of a reminder that what I was watching was not the original. Also, though Coming to America came long before it, the film also clearly paid quite a bit of homage to the Black Panther film. I thought that was great, especially since I am sure the success of and reactions towards Black Panther contributed in some ways to affirming that there is indeed an audience for a film like Coming 2 America all of these years later.
Overall, it doesn't come close to the original, but I don't think it was trying to. If the goal was to just give us a fun story about what's happening in Zamunda in 2021, with the return of like 90% of the original cast plus an abundance of cameos, it succeeded. It was pretty good, decently funny, and worth at least one watch. One last thing, watch the credits! There are mid-credit and post-credit scenes.