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'''Coming to America''' is a 1988 comedy film directed by John Landis. The screenplay was written by David Sheffield, Barry W. Blaustein and Eddie Murphy, based on an idea and an original script by Art Buchwald.
Murphy was joined by James Earl Jones, Arsenio Hall and Madge Sinclair in starring roles.^[1]

Contents

Plot

Cast

Production

Lawsuit

In popular culture

References

External links

Plot

Akeem Joffer (Eddie Murphy), the prince and heir to the throne of the fictitious African country Zamunda, is discontented with being pampered all his life. The final straw is when his parents (James Earl Jones and Madge Sinclair) present him with a bride-to-be he has never met before, trained to desire mindlessly obeying his every command.
Akeem concocts a plan to travel to America to find a wife he can both love and respect. He and servant Semmi (Arsenio Hall) settle on Queens, New York, and after several scrapes, find an apartment and begin working at a local restaurant called McDowell's, a blatant copy of McDonald's, passing themselves off as students. When he first meets Akeem and Semmi, owner Mr. McDowell (John Amos) explains all the minute differences between his place and McDonald's, ending with the line, "They use the sesame seed bun. My buns have no seeds."
Akeem falls in love with Lisa (Shari Headley), the daughter of the restaurant's owner, Mr. McDowell. The rest of the film centers on Akeem's attempts to win Lisa's hand in marriage, while adjusting to life in America and dodging his royal duties and prerogatives.

Cast

Actor	Role
Eddie Murphy	Prince Akeem Clarence Randy Watson Saul Sanyu
Arsenio Hall	Semmi Morris Reverend Brown Last (ugly) woman in bar scene
James Earl Jones	King Jaffe Joffer
John Amos	Cleo McDowell
Madge Sinclair	Queen Aoleon
Shari Headley	Lisa McDowell
Paul Bates	Oha
Eriq La Salle	Darryl Jenks
Frankie Faison	Landlord
Vanessa Bell Calloway	Imani Izzi
Louie Anderson	Maurice
Allison Dean	Patrice McDowell
Jake Steinfeld	Cab Driver
Calvin Lockhart	Colonel Izzi
Michele Watley	Bather
Cuba Gooding, Jr.	Boy in Barber Shop
Ralph Bellamy	Randolph Duke
Don Ameche	Mortimer Duke
Samuel L. Jackson	Hold Up Man at McDowell's
Clint Smith	Sweets

Production

Because of the obvious name similarity, the film's producers had to obtain permission from McDonald's before using the name McDowell's. The scenes in McDowell's were actually filmed at a Wendy's restaurant located at 8507 Queens Boulevard in Elmhurst, Queens.
Like many of Eddie Murphy's films, ''Coming to America'' features Murphy in several different roles, this time paired with Arsenio Hall, who also plays multiple roles. For example, Hall plays Reverend Brown, who introduces Randy Watson (Murphy) and his band Sexual Chocolate, who perform a terrible rendition of Whitney Houston's song "Greatest Love of All" at the "Black Awareness Rally." In the barbershop scenes, Murphy and Hall (heavily made up) play the elderly barbers Clarence and Morris, who engage in a furious debate with Sweets about the boxing skills of Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano rather than attending to Akeem's hair. The barber scene is especially notable because Murphy plays both Akeem and Clarence simultaneously, effectively giving himself a haircut. Murphy also plays the old Jewish man in the barbershop who calls Akeem, "Kunta Kinte," referring to the '' character made famous by LeVar Burton (trivia: John Amos played the adult Kunta Kinte later in the ''Roots'' series).
Famed South African chorus, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, sings ''Mbube'' during the opening sequence (the song is known as ''The Lion Sleeps Tonight'' in America). The group has gone on to record several different versions of ''Mbube''; however, the version heard in ''Coming to America'' has not been released on its soundtrack or on CD as of 2006.
John Landis' calling card/easter egg, See You Next Wednesday, appears on a science-fiction movie poster in the subway station after Lisa storms off the train and Akeem follows her.
Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche reprise their roles as the Duke brothers from another Landis / Murphy collaboration, ''Trading Places''. Randolph and Mortimer Duke lost their enormous fortunes in that film because of Murphy's character. In this film, the brothers are now homeless and living on the streets. Akeem gives them a paper bag filled with money, which they gratefully accept (while failing to notice that the generous Prince Akeem bears an uncanny resemblance to Billy Ray Valentine, the man who ruined them).

Lawsuit

The film was the subject of the ''Buchwald v. Paramount'' civil suit, filed by Art Buchwald in 1990 against the film's producers on the grounds that the film's idea was stolen from a 1982 script that Paramount had optioned from Buchwald. Buchwald won the breach of contract action and the court ordered money damages. The parties later settled the case before an appeal.

In popular culture

References to the movie in later pop culture:

★ One of the Zamunda scenes is recreated in the 1997 Busta Rhymes video ''Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See''.

★ Soul Glo has entered the English and American vernacular as a name for any jheri curl product. Family Force 5 lead singer Solomon Olds also based his "gangsta" name Soul Glow Activatur on the fictional hair gel.

★ A Bulgarian band called Zamunda Banana Band performs covers of evergreens with humorous Bulgarian lyrics. The band is a duo of two Bulgarians from Plovdiv that pretend to be Africans and speak broken Bulgarian with a funny accent.

★ The song ''Coming to America'', by Dipset rap duo S.A.S., contains the lyric "Now we're coming to America like Eddie Murphy".

★ In the track "Coming2America" on the Ludacris album "Word of Mouf", he alludes to a scene in ''Coming To America'' where Akeem is being bathed by topless female servants by extracting the line "The royal penis is clean, Your Highness." Snoop Dogg and R. Kelly repeated this on their single ''That's That''. Additionally, the melody used for ''That's That'' is extrapolated from the background music during this scene.

References

1. Thane Rosenbaum wrote, "In 1995, the syndicated columnist Art Buchwald prevailed after a seven-year legal battle against Paramount Pictures, claiming that he had submitted the idea, and the original script, for the Eddie Murphy film, ''Coming to America'', without ever being properly compensated or acknowledged for his efforts. The trial court eventually agreed with Buchwald, although the damage award that he received was considerably less than what he had sought, and even less than what he eventually had to pay out in legal fees. ''The Myth of Moral Justice'', page 182.

External links

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★ Filming Locations