Coming To America

In my opinion this is the finest comedy of all-time. Here's why.

"Coming to America" hit our cinemas in 1989, my first year of high school. I first got wind of it by some bus ads that focused on the fact most of the main characters were played by Eddie Murphy. To my knowledge this was the first time an actor had played so many roles in a movie, of such diversity (this was before he tried this several more times, generally all in awful films except "Bowfinger"). Eddie Murphy was a star and when the reviews came out I knew I had to see it. I'm not sure when I saw it, but I'm pretty sure it was a year or so later on VHS. Here's my Top 20 things about the movie.

1/ Sexual Chocolate. Randy Watson's parody of "The Greatest Love Of All" opened my eyes to the crappiness of modern music. Hilarious scene.

2/ Screen debut for Cuba Gooding Jnr and one of the first for Samuel L Jackson (and yes there was an "F" bomb)

3/ The song "She's Your Queen To Be", most notably the line about being "free from infection"

4/ Arsenio Hall. Awful as Semmi, but brilliant as Morris and Rev. Brown.

5/ John Amos' line "I feel like breakdancing".

6/ "Soul Glo"

7/ Maurice talking about his rise through the ranks at McDowell's

8/ Frankie Faison as the landlord. Just discovered he was Chris Rock's manager in "Down To Earth" and was in 40+ episodes of "The Wire".
*Darren, this may be the clincher to getting me to watch it.

9/ The barber shop scenes.

10/ The girl who talks about her Hollywood ambitions.

11/ Akeem courting Lisa.

12/ Akeem meeting his wife.

13/ The Black Awareness rally.

14/ "I do not use chemicals. Only fruit and berries"

15/ The basketball game

16/ Scenes at their apartment

17/ The night club scene

18/ The hold-up scene

19/ The bad acting of Shari Headley

20/ Sheer rewatchability. Still holds up well after 20 years

Landmark comedy. If you've never seen it, get it out. If you haven't seen it in 5 years, give it another watch.