It is as if the writers are aware of this in the discussion between Lavelle (Jermaine Fowler) and Mirembe (Nomzamo Mbatha) about Hollywood and movie sequels. The dialogue is also wry and almost implausible. The new movie is glamorous but the plot has a platitudinal structure that rewinds the same story albeit with the introduction of new faces. Just like his father 30 years earlier, Prince Lavelle falls into a complicated love affair of his own and the movie centers around the resolution of this. He is betrothed to Bopoto (Teyana Taylor), a princess from neighbouring Nextdoria whose king had threatened to oust Akeem if his daughter is not married to the heir of the Zamundan kingdom. The sequel is centered on this son who is named Lavelle (Jermaine Fowler) who was brought to Zamunda as the heir to the throne. Shocked by this, Semmi (Arsenio Hall), Akeem’s friend and aide confessed his complicity in the situation and they both return to New York in search of the son. King Jaffe Joffer (James Earl Jones), now old and dying, wants Akeem to locate a previously unknown son he sired on a drunken night in New York. The sequel has a similar story and it is set 30 years after Prince Akeem’s marriage to Queen Lisa. The king, unconvinced, resisted this but the intervention of the Queen saved the day and he eventually married his American lover, Lisa (Shari Headley). In the 1988 original, Prince Akeem (Eddie Murphy) was engaged to a princess from Nextdoria but he was uninterested in the relationship as he wanted to marry a woman of his own choosing. Long before the imaginary country of Wakanda in Marvel’s Black Panther, there was Zamunda, a prosperous African country whose prince visited Queens in New York in search of his own queen. The links between African stories and Hollywood were not as deep as they are now and the pushback against stereotypical portrayals of Africa was not as rife. It captures a different era, but it is a culturally significant movie. One factor that made the anticipation big is the star-studded cast list. When the announcement was made that a sequel to the 1988 box office hit, Coming to America was going to be released, there were some positive expectations from the audience of this Black Hollywood movie classic as well as a disappointment that a work of such seeming perfection is about to be damaged.
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