Coming to America (1988)
Directed by John Landis
An African prince decides it’s time for him to find a princess... and his mission leads him and his most loyal friend to Queens, New York. In disguise as an impoverished immigrant, the pampered prince quickly finds himself a new job, new friends, new digs, new enemies and lots of trouble.
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What critics compared Coming to America to
The thin plot obviously borrows heavily from other sources, including Eddie Murphy’s “Coming to America” and Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator.”
It worked for Eddie Murphy in "Coming to America," though his anti-misogynist African prince arrived in search of a soul mate.
Reminiscent of 1988′s Coming to America , Baron Cohen’s “Admiral General Aladeen, Supreme Leader, Chief Ophthalmologist, Invincible, All Triumphant, Beloved Oppressor of the People” travels to the States, to speak at the United Nations in New York City.
Meanwhile, the now-beardless Aladeen gets humbled in much the same way as Eddie Murphy’s benevolent royal in Coming To America , except instead of mopping up a McDonald’s, he teams up with Zoey (Anna Faris), the hippie proprietor of a Brooklyn organic grocery.
For his third starring vehicle, Baron Cohen's ditched his real-life guerilla attack routine but continues to embrace the same outrageous humor for a film that, while looking a lot like the dark side of Eddie Murphy's "Coming to America," is consistently funny on multiple levels and chock full of comic cameos.
Confined by a conventional narrative, The Dictator at times resembles the John Landis-Eddie Murphy fish-out-of-water comedies of the mid ‘80s, Trading Places and Coming to America—although SBC’s Aladeen is at once more hapless and offensive than Murphy.
They lack even the childlike idealization that made the “Africa” scenes of Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America and Michael Jackson’s Remember the Time music video such straight-up, feel-good versions of black anthropology.
It’s not even new to movies, really— Coming to America being a prominent, humorous riff on black Americans’ imaginative curiosity about Africa and Africans, and Hype Williams’s Belly , which features a character played by Nas expresses a desire to leave behind a life of violence to go to Africa and find his roots.
The actor suggests Eddie Murphy in “Coming to America” crossed with the composure Adrien Brody brought to “The Pianist,” where performing serves as a way to communicate across cultural differences, and also to redirect the frustration of all the ways he has been mistreated.
"Coming to America" has a far gentler spirit than the "Beverly Hills Cop" films, and Murphy, who seems to have based his performance on Yul Brynner's in "The King and I," at least tries to sustain his character throughout.
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Most versions of this journey would strip it down to comedic intent and have Nick pulling a Coming to America .
Recalling the likes of Pretty Woman, Coming to America and, forgive me for saying this, Fifty Shades of Grey , it’s not like anything that happens will be startling to a single viewer sitting in the audience.
Armed with standout performances from stars Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy, Trading Places undoubtedly (and effortlessly) lives up to its reputation as one of the most impressive comedies to emerge out of the 1980s.
In contrast to the young, energetic and gracious Murphy of “Trading Places” (another Landis classic), the director paints Murphy as arrogant, mean, unprofessional, egotistical and obnoxious, and refused to work with him until the comedian personally requested he direct “Beverly Hills Cop III” six years later.
We now move to the New York of "Arthur" and "Trading Places," where the rich play poor for a day.
Trading Places' effectiveness inevitably forces one to lament Landis' slow but steady fall from grace, as the filmmaker - after cranking out such memorable comedies as ¡Three Amigos! and Coming to America - has been woefully absent from theaters since helming 1998's underrated Blues Brothers 2000.