Eddie Murphy plays a prince who has everything and wants none of it. In Coming to America, he is Akeem Joffer, crown prince of the fictional African nation of Zamunda, and on his 21st birthday his parents hand him an arranged bride named Imani Izzi. He lasts a few minutes with her. Then he talks his father into 40 days abroad to find a woman who will love him for himself and not his title.
John Landis directed the 1988 romantic comedy from a story Murphy created, with a script by David Sheffield and Barry W. Blaustein. It runs 117 minutes. Paramount Pictures released it in the United States on June 29, 1988.
Trailer, via Paramount Movies.
Akeem and Semmi Land in Queens
Akeem does not tour Europe. He and his best friend and personal aide, Semmi, fly to the New York City borough of Queens and rent a squalid tenement in Jackson Heights, posing as poor foreign students. Arsenio Hall plays Semmi, and the disguise is the engine of the whole film: two men trained to be served must now serve themselves.
Entry-Level Jobs at McDowell’s
The pair get work at McDowell’s, a McDonald’s knockoff run by Lisa’s widowed father, Cleo. John Amos plays Cleo, who spends his days dodging trademark-infringement claims from McDonald’s lawyers by arguing his restaurant differs in various insignificant ways. That running joke is the film’s sharpest piece of business, and Amos plays it without a wink.
Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall, Multiplied
The cast list is a magic trick. Murphy also plays Clarence, the barber shop owner who invites the pair to a neighborhood rally; Randy Watson, a soul singer with the band Sexual Chocolate; and Saul, an elderly Jewish barbershop customer. Hall doubles as Reverend Brown, who speaks at that rally, plus the barber Morris and a clubgoer billed as the Extremely Ugly Girl.
The makeup work lets both men disappear into bit parts, and the bit parts are where the film’s comedy lives. James Earl Jones plays King Jaffe Joffer, Akeem’s father, and Madge Sinclair plays Queen Aoleon. Jones gives the king a boom that makes the Zamunda scenes feel like a different, larger movie.
Lisa McDowell and the Problem of Darryl
Shari Headley plays Lisa McDowell, the independent woman Akeem decides he wants. Akeem meets her at the rally and finds she has every quality he came looking for. Then the film puts an obstacle in the way: Darryl Jenks, Lisa’s lazy and obnoxious boyfriend, played by Eriq La Salle. Darryl’s father owns Soul Glo, a Jheri curl–like hairstyling aid.
The double-date to a basketball game is where the plot turns. Akeem is recognized there by an immigrant from Zamunda, and the disguise starts to strain. He also stops an armed robber who has hit McDowell’s more than once, which earns him a place at a soiree at Cleo’s home in Jamaica Estates.
The Faces Around the Edges
Supporting players fill out the margins of the film:
- Frankie Faison as the landlord of the tenement
- Louie Anderson as Maurice, a McDowell’s employee
- Paul Bates as Oha, the royal family’s longtime servant
- Allison Dean as Patrice, Lisa’s younger sister
- Samuel L. Jackson as the Hold-Up Man
That last name is a small, strange pleasure. Jackson appears briefly as the robber, years before he became a leading man.
The Louie Anderson Casting
Hall has said Paramount Pictures insisted on a white actor in the cast and provided a list of three white performers. Murphy and Hall picked Louie Anderson because they knew him and liked him. It is a small piece of production history, but it says something about how the two leads worked: they cast people they trusted, not people the studio handed them.
What Holds Up and What Doesn’t
The first half of Coming to America is close to perfect. The Zamunda court is lavish and silly at once, the Jackson Heights tenement is a good joke told with real texture, and the barbershop scenes give Murphy and Hall room to stack characters on top of each other. The film’s best idea is simple: a man with every advantage pretends to have none, and the pretending teaches him something.
The second half is where the film sags. Once Akeem has the job, the friends and the love interest, the story has to resolve the lie, and the resolution is the least interesting part of it. Darryl is a cartoon, and the film never gives Lisa enough to do beyond being the prize Akeem correctly identified. The basketball-game recognition and the robbery are plot mechanics, not scenes.
Still, the movie earns its reputation. It grossed an estimated $288.8–$350 million on a $36 million budget and drew generally positive reviews. A pilot for a planned spin-off series was made in 1989 and never picked up. A sequel, Coming 2 America, arrived on March 4, 2021.
Coming to America is a comedy that trusts its performers more than its plot, and it is right to. The Murphy-and-Hall character work is the reason to watch it, and the reason it still gets quoted. The romance is thinner than the jokes, and the ending is thinner than both.
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