Coming 2 America: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This movie proves that Eddie Murphy’s comedy fastball is a faded, distant memory, which transforms this movie from a limp comedy into a devastating tragedy.

There was a time when Eddie Murphy was the biggest comedian and movie star on the planet. In the 1980’s he had a string of comedy blockbusters, 48 Hrs. (1982), Trading Places (1983), Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Coming to America (1988), that made him the epicenter of comedy culture. Back then it was Eddie’s world and we were all just living and laughing in it.

Murphy’s meteoric rise to fame began on Saturday Night Live , where he debuted in 1980, at the tender young age of 19, and hilariously held court until 1984. Murphy was a electrifying presence on the show and an equally dynamic stand up comedian, as evidenced by his stand up comedy specials Delirious (1983) and Raw (1987).

Coming to America (1988), directed by John Landis, was an intriguing film as it showcased Murphy’s scintillating talent, his abundant charisma and his remarkable versatility. The film was rated R so Murphy’s more profane comedic edge could be spotlighted, but it also had a love story at its heart, which allowed Murphy to mine his more sweet and good-natured side.

Coming to America was an original and captivating comedy that seemed to portend Murphy’s star growing even larger. But unfortunately, instead of being the launching pad to even greater heights, Coming to America ended up being the last good thing Eddie Murphy has ever done. Yes, there were some mildly acceptable movies that came after it, such as The Distinguished Gentleman (1992) and Bowfinger (1999), but these banal efforts pale in comparison to Murphy’s glorious mid-80’s apex.

33 years later Eddie Murphy and company are back with a Coming to America sequel. Coming 2 America, which premiered on Amazon Prime Friday, March 5th, is the 30 years too late Coming to America sequel that no one was asking for and that none of us deserve.

The film, directed by Craig Brewer, is a rehashing of the 1988 original, with Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall back reprising all their iconic roles. The problem though is that Eddie Murphy long ago lost his comedy fastball and his comedy caddy Arsenio Hall never had a fastball to begin with.

Another obstacle for the film is that cultural shifts over the last 33 years have created an audience of fragiles too delicate to handle any raunch, so the bare breasts and R rating from 1988 are history and now Eddie Murphy is forced to live in a rather tepid PG-13 world which is woke approved.

The end result of all this is that Coming 2 America is egregiously and remarkably unfunny. The lone bright spot in the nearly two-hour endeavor is the brief scene when Murphy and Hall don the make-up and bring back their famous barbershop alter egos and take some digs at the absurdity of the woke world we all inhabit, but besides that minor bit of humor, there isn’t a laugh to be found.

A big reason why there are no laughs is because there are a lot of painfully unfunny people in the movie.

For example, Leslie Jones plays a long lost and forgotten one night stand from Prince Akeem’s old days, and she is beyond dreadful. Ms. Jones’ career success is one of the great mysteries of the modern age as she has never, ever been funny…not even by accident. To her credit, at least she is consistent in being aggressively awful.

Jermaine Fowler plays Akeem’s bastard son LaVelle and seems like a survivor of charisma bypass surgery. Fowler is so uninteresting and embarrassingly unfunny on-screen I would rather watch my own autopsy than suffer through watching him “act” again.

The gorgeous Kiki Layne plays Akeem’s princess daughter, and spearheads the girl power narrative that drives this jalopy right off the cliff. Layne is a beauty but she is as wooden and dull an actress as you’ll ever come across. Every scene she appears in comes to a resoundingly screeching halt as her dead eyes act like black holes sucking the life out of everything in their orbit.

There is no point in criticizing any of the forced plot points or the film’s groveling social politics, because none of those things would have matter if the damn thing were just funny. But sadly, Eddie Murphy is just not able to reignite that elusive comedy and charisma spark that propelled him to the heights of the entertainment industry nearly forty years ago.

Murphy is unimaginably rich, so he didn’t make Coming 2 America because he was short on the mortgage payments. I think Murphy made Coming 2 America and 2019’s underwhelming Dolemite is My Name, because he actually wanted to do something worthwhile once again.

I think the wheels began to come off the Murphy wagon when he stopped doing stand up comedy back at the end of the 80’s. Murphy was such a star that he became detached from real people and reality and it was easier not to do the hard work of being good at stand up…which takes a lot of hard work.

For years I’ve heard stories from dozens of people about Murphy’s could not care less work ethic on films in the 2000’s and early 2010’s. It’s not uncommon to hear actors and crew bitch about a star they’ve worked with, but the stories I kept hearing all told the same story. According to these folks Murphy was a lazy, entitled, ego maniac who did barely the bare minimum on movies. He even used to insist that a double be used for every shot he was in where he didn’t have dialogue…we aren’t talking over the shoulder stuff, we are talking Eddie wide shots and reaction shots stuff. Even for spoiled movie stars, this sort of thing is outrageous. T be clear, I don’t know if these claims are true - they might just be the result of the usual jealous sniping and bitching against stars, I just know I’ve heard them quite a bit.

In this context, it becomes apparent that Eddie Murphy stopped giving a shit about thirty years ago and only started giving a shit again in the last few years because his star had faded to the point where he wasn’t telling punchlines, he had become one. But during those decades of aggressively not giving a shit, Murphy lost the spark that made him so special back in the day, and now he can’t reignite it.

I think that sucks because the world is a better place when Eddie Murphy is Eddie Murphy and not some comedy eunuch churning out flaccid garbage like Coming 2 America. Sadly, I don’t think we are ever going to see Eddie Murphy be great again, and Coming 2 America is a prime exhibit making that case.

In conclusion, I really wanted Coming 2 America to be great but I would’ve been thrilled if it just boasted some quality Eddie Murphy moments. Sadly, the film isn’t anywhere near great, in fact, it is terrible. And worst of all Eddie Murphy looks entirely incapable of being Eddie Murphy anymore, which transformed Coming 2 America for me from being a bad comedy into being a profundly sad tragedy.

©2021

Death to 2020: A Review and Commentary

In a year ripe for satire, Netflix’s predictable mockumentary ‘Death to 2020’ is proof of comedy’s calamitous demise

The film’s tepid and establishment friendly comedic takes on 2020 feel like the final nail in comedy’s coffin.

Death to 2020 is the new Netflix mockumentary that sets out to humorously sum up the nightmare that was 2020. The film, which premiered on the streaming service on December 27th, recounts the actual terrible events of the past year and has fake experts played by actors such as Samuel L. Jackson and Lisa Kudrow on as talking heads to comedically comment upon them.

The makers of Death to 2020, Charles Brooker and Anabel Jones, are best known in the U.S. for their terrifically terrifying and unnervingly prescient sci-fi horror show Black Mirror. But U.K. viewers first got to know them from their more comedy-oriented projects like the “Wipe Series”.

Death to 2020 is much more like the Wipe Series than Black Mirror as it attempts to be a comedy. Unfortunately, it fails in that endeavor.

What makes Death to 2020 so irritating is that it has nothing unique to say and it doesn’t even say the same tired old stuff uniquely.

Granted, some of the jokes are mildly amusing, and some of the performances are good, Tracey Ullman as Queen Elizabeth II, Hugh Grant as a stuffy and ornery British historian and Diane Morgan as one of the top five most average people in the world, are well done. Others, such as Leslie Jones as a behavioral psychologist and Lisa Kudrow as a conservative spokeswoman, are decidedly not.

Ultimately the film has the comedic heft, impact and staying power of a snide and snarky tweet.  At best it resembles a high-end, star-studded 2020 version of one of those silly Best of the 80’s clip shows on VH1.

The biggest problem with Death to 2020 though is the problem with most comedy nowadays, in that it is such a suffocating and stultifyingly safe and painfully predictable exercise as to be frustrating and fruitless.

If you have seen a single monologue in the past year by any of the sanctimonious, self-righteous serfs to the establishment on late night tv, such as Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Bill Maher, Trevor Noah or John Oliver, then you’ve experienced the same impotent comedy of Death to 2020. 

The tired formula of the late night comedy eunuchs, where they flaccidly recite establishment-approved witticisms devoid of insight and edge, is dutifully replicated here just in mockumentary form.

The result is, not surprisingly, that there’s not an ounce of originality or profundity found in the hour and ten-minute film that is too long by roughly an hour.

Also clearly lacking from Death to 2020 is any semblance of comedic testicular fortitude as the usual safe targets are held up for ridicule. Of course Trump is pilloried because he is a walking punchline, as is clueless Joe Biden, who, amusingly, is referred to both as a “prehistoric concierge” and a ”civil war hero”, but obviously none of that is even remotely daring.

“Karens”, conservatives and anti-lockdown activists are also the butt of many jokes, but the equally golden opportunity to lambaste the illiberal left for laughs is never taken. For instance, the comedy rich environment of the Black Lives Matter movement is not mocked, and the “protestors” looting and burning businesses in the name of George Floyd don’t get taken to task either.

But most telling is that also absent from the comedy firing line are celebrities, like the highly hysterical dopes and dullards who vomited out the repugnantly self-serving “Imagine” and “I Take Responsibility“ videos.

By ignoring these subjects Death to 2020 reveals itself to be little more than just another pandering video compliantly committed to kissing the right asses and devoutly dedicated to never biting the hand that feeds it.

As George Carlin famously once said of the powerful in America, “it’s a big club and you ain’t in it!” But the establishment court jesters who made Death to 2020 either are desperate to become members or are already in the club, as their resolute refusal to challenge the status quo is a perfect representation of the sad state of comedy in 2020.

Yes, there are some notable exceptions, Dave Chappelle and Bill Burr being the most prominent, but beyond that, whether it be Stephen Colbert weeping on air like one of the buffoons he used to belittle, or Jimmy Fallon castrating himself with a cowardly apology for an allegedly offensive blackface bit from twenty years ago, or John Oliver’s pathetic pandering to wokeness, or Saturday Night Live’s fierce commitment to anti-comedy or any of the other mainstream comedians who have groveled and genuflected to those who hold the power in our culture, 2020 has been the absolute nadir for contemporary comedy.

The bottom line is that 2020 has been a most brutal year that may have changed our world forever but it is also rife with profound opportunities for humor. Unfortunately for us, 2020 may also have killed comedy, and Death to 2020 is its decidedly unoriginal and unfunny death knell.

My Rating: 2 our of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Although at times mildly amusing, there is nothing original or noteworthy to see here.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Bill Burr Battles the Karen Dragon on SNL

Comedian Bill Burr hosted SNL this weekend and masterfully sent the woke into a fury with his brazen and insightful monologue

Saturday Night Live has became a haven for limp, politically correct comedy, but this past weekend Bill Burr burned down the house with his no-holds-barred comedic approach.

Bill Burr, a brilliant and curmudgeonly stand-up comedian who refuses to kowtow to the politically correct, went scorched earth in his SNL monologue Saturday night by taking on cancel culture, self-serving white women and their performative woke posturing and Gay Pride Month being longer than Black History Month. 

Burr’s monologue was apparently so incendiary the New York Times felt it needed a trigger warning, “Burr used his opening monologue to mock some sensitive topics — feel free to skip this section if you find that style of comedy distasteful”.

The monologue took flight when Burr ranted about people trying to cancel the long dead John Wayne for an interview he gave in 1970, which was met with a confused smattering of applause. Apparently, the SNL audience, like New York Times readers, aren’t used to comedy that isn’t entirely p.c., impotent and toothless.

Things then got really spicy when speaking of the woke movement, Burr observed, ““It should’ve been about people of color… somehow white women swung their Gucci-footed feet over the fence of oppression and stuck themselves at the front of the line.”

The studio audience met that insightful bit with cold silence while the house band behind Burr were frozen in woke shock,  never laughing, clapping or moving once throughout his monologue.

Not surprisingly Karens on twitter had a conniption in response…which of course just made Burr’s point for him. This is like the old joke, “hey, I resemble that remark!” made manifest.

One woman tweeted, “That just looks like misogyny to me. I would respect that if it came from a black woman and not a white dude…”

Another snowflake courageously tweeted, “Bill Burr's opening monologue is just obnoxious and misogynstic. It's 2020. Someone tell him calling women "bitches" isn't funny”.

Burr’s final assault on the woke brigade came when he brought up the injustice of Gay Pride Month being all of June while Black History Month, which is for people “who were actually enslaved”, is in February, the coldest and shortest month of the year.

Burr joked, “These are equator people give them the sun for 31 days. There’s gay Black people, they could celebrate from June 1, June 31… give them 61 days to celebrate”.

This was met on twitter with charges of homophobia as one dullard tweeted, “Cool so bill burr went from misogynistic to homophobic. Time to go to bed.”

Burr’s crime of whiteness arose once again when someone tweeted, “hey bill burr i don’t think you should push the racist homophobic agenda on an snl sketch coming from a straight white male it’s not funny”.

The woke poseurs claiming Burr is racist either don’t know or don’t care that Burr’s wife is black…which should maybe blunt charges of his being racist.

The type of white people who love the safe comedy of SNL and hate Burr are the kind that adore Kamala Harris because they want a black female president for no other reason than identity politics and thinking it makes them not racist, even though Kamala Harris is loathed by actual black people.

The Karens outraged by Burr’s blunt truth-telling live safe, suburban lives and use tears and tantrums to get what they want…which is a cozy cocoon of silence and obedience. They refuse to have their vapid ideology confronted and will never engage in debate, only shrieking and wailing. Burr did us all a favor by tearing down their farcical façade.

Some might say the audience and band’s dismissive reactions and the outrage on twitter mean that Burr comedically failed…I think it actually signals his unparalleled success.

Burr went into the woke lion’s den and poked the evil beast right in the eye. While he didn’t get many laughs in the studio, he got a ton of them in my living room and no doubt in other living rooms across the country.

Unfortunately, SNL has devolved from the height of its powers under the manic genius of John Belushi, the edgy brilliance of Eddie Murphy and the cartoonish buffoonery of Will Ferrell, into its current flaccid form, which is a cesspool of insipid anti-comedy that prefers to be safe and politically correct than to being daring and funny. Well, safe and politically correct is not how Bill Burr, or any great comedian, rolls.

The woke twitterati and others bemoaning Bill Burr’s bludgeoning of political correctness on SNL are the same type of people who would’ve scolded George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce and Billy Connolly out of existence.

One need only watch the rest of the show with its inane and unfunny sketches as well as its overly long and painfully tedious cold open, to see that Burr’s monologue was the only thing on the entire program with a pulse (Jack White’s scintillating musical performances aside).

Sadly, there is no way Bill Burr will ever be invited back on SNL, which is a shame, because his aggressive, take no prisoners, tell-it-like-it-is type of energy is exactly what makes for great comedy, is the secret ingredient that made the once iconic show successful in the first place, and is the only thing that could ever return it to prominence once again.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020