By 1988, Eddie Murphy was the biggest comedy star on the planet and he knew it. His previous films had leaned into his fast-talking, street-smart persona, the guy who was always the smartest person in the room and made sure everyone knew it. Coming to America asked him to do something different: play a gentle, earnest, almost naive character who wants nothing more than to find love on his own terms. It’s Murphy’s most generous performance, one where he shares the spotlight instead of hogging it, and it revealed a warmth that his earlier roles had buried under bravado.
Murphy plays Prince Akeem of Zamunda, a fictional African nation of spectacular wealth, who travels to Queens, New York to find a bride who will love him for himself rather than his royal status. He’s accompanied by his loyal servant Semmi, played by Arsenio Hall, who has zero interest in slumming it in a cramped apartment when they could be living in a palace. The culture clash between Zamundan royalty and Queens working-class life drives the comedy, but the romance between Akeem and Lisa McDowell, played by Shari Headley, gives the film its emotional spine.
Murphy’s Seven Faces and Hall’s Perfect Partnership
The headline act is Murphy and Hall each playing multiple characters, and the execution is remarkable. Murphy plays Akeem, an elderly Jewish barber, a soul singer, and a belligerent barber shop regular. Hall plays Semmi, another barber, a preacher, and an elderly woman. The barbershop scenes, where Murphy and Hall argue with each other as different people using Rick Baker’s transformative prosthetic work, are self-contained comedy sketches embedded within the larger film. They could be extracted and shown on their own and they’d still be hilarious.
But the multiple characters are the sizzle. The steak is Murphy’s Akeem. There’s a sweetness to the performance that Murphy had never shown before. Akeem is intelligent but not savvy, principled but not rigid, romantic but not foolish. He’s a man who has everything except the one thing that matters to him, and Murphy plays that longing without a trace of self-pity. When Akeem works mopping floors at McDowell’s restaurant, Murphy’s physicality changes completely. He shrinks himself, becomes quieter, lets other people fill the space. It’s subtle work in a movie that isn’t usually praised for subtlety.
Arsenio Hall matches Murphy scene for scene, which is something very few performers of that era could claim. Semmi’s growing frustration with Akeem’s insistence on living as a commoner generates consistent comedy because Hall plays the complaint as genuine suffering. The dynamic between Akeem’s idealism and Semmi’s pragmatism gives every scene a natural tension that keeps the comedy from going slack.
The supporting cast is loaded. James Earl Jones brings regal gravitas to King Jaffe Joffer, making the comedy of a controlling father figure land because Jones plays it completely straight. John Amos as Cleo McDowell, the man running a fast-food restaurant that definitely isn’t McDonald’s, builds a performance of wounded pride and entrepreneurial hustle that steals every scene he’s in. Madge Sinclair as Queen Aoleon radiates dignity. Even the smallest roles, from the Soul Glo commercial to the neighbor in the apartment, feel fully inhabited.
Where the Crown Slips
The romance at the center of the film, while charming, follows a trajectory so predictable that even 1988 audiences could have mapped it from the opening scene. Akeem lies about his identity, Lisa falls for the lie, the truth comes out, there’s a breakup, then reconciliation. Every beat lands exactly where you expect it to land. John Landis directs these sections with competence but not inspiration, and the middle act of the film, where the romantic complications pile up, drags in a way that the comedy sequences never do.
Shari Headley gives a warm, likable performance as Lisa, but the script doesn’t give her much to work with beyond being worthy of Akeem’s affection. She’s smart, she’s kind, she stands up for herself, and that’s about the extent of her characterization. Lisa exists to be the right woman for Akeem rather than a fully developed character in her own right. In a movie this generous with its male characters, the thinness of the central female role stands out.
The portrayal of Zamunda is a complicated legacy. On one hand, the film presents an African nation of wealth, sophistication, and cultural pride at a time when Hollywood almost exclusively depicted Africa through lenses of poverty and conflict. On the other hand, Zamunda is clearly a fantasy constructed for comedy, and some of its details play more as gentle parody than celebration. The film’s heart is in the right place, but the execution occasionally wobbles between honoring and caricaturing.
Some of the humor dates itself unavoidably. The Sexual Harassment sketch and certain jokes about gender dynamics reflect the late 1980s in ways that modern audiences will notice. The film isn’t mean-spirited about these moments, but they exist in a different comedic register than current sensibilities allow.
The Queens Renaissance
What Coming to America gets exactly right, and what gives it lasting resonance, is its portrait of Queens. The neighborhood isn’t a punchline. It’s a community. The barbershop, McDowell’s restaurant, the apartment building, the basketball court: these locations feel lived-in and loved. Akeem doesn’t slum it in Queens. He discovers it. The film treats the working-class Black community of Queens with the same affection it shows Zamundan royalty, and that equal regard is what makes the culture clash comedy work without condescension.
John Landis, working from a story by Murphy, lets Queens breathe as a real place with real people. The extras feel like neighbors, the locations feel like places you’d actually go, and the rhythms of daily life feel authentic. This groundedness gives Murphy’s performance somewhere real to land. Akeem’s journey from pampered prince to Queens resident isn’t just about finding a wife. It’s about discovering that the world outside the palace walls is worth engaging with on its own terms.
Should You Watch Coming to America?
If you want to see Eddie Murphy at his most versatile and his most likable, this is the movie. The multiple character performances are technically impressive, but it’s the central performance as Akeem that makes the film worth returning to. The comedy holds up, the romance works well enough to carry the emotional weight, and the supporting cast elevates every scene they touch.
Skip it if predictable romantic comedy structures frustrate you even when the comedy around them is strong. The love story follows every expected beat, and if you can’t get past that formula, the film’s other pleasures may not compensate.
The Verdict on Coming to America
Coming to America proved that Eddie Murphy could do more than talk fast and laugh loud, though he does plenty of both here. It’s a showcase for his range, his generosity as a performer, and his ability to build a character you root for without relying on the aggression that powered his earlier hits. The multiple character work is dazzling, Arsenio Hall is a perfect scene partner, and the film’s affection for its community gives it a warmth that franchise comedies rarely achieve. It’s not perfect, but it’s consistently entertaining and occasionally brilliant, which is more than most comedies from any era can claim.