John Landis hits a home-run with Coming to America, featuring Eddie Murphy at the height of his powers. He plays the son of an African kingdom ruler(thus heir) who travels to America because he does not want an arranged marriage at home. This is a typical fish out of the water plotline with plenty of laughs and plenty of heart. The actors are all very good especially James Earl Jones as the father. If you in mood of a funny movie- one that is reeking of nostalgia than Coming to America is a film you should consider. In my opinion this is both Landis's and Murphy's best effort.

One of those movies you can watch over and over again. A pure classic.

This is one of my favorite comedies of all times. My brothers and I used to watch it over and over again, and knew some of the dialogues by heart.Silly, outrageous with a pinch of romance, this movie is just fun. An African prince is tired of being a prince and wants to live a normal life to experience that, wants to experience love and not to be handed everything. He lives everything behind, takes a few millions (ha!) and arrives into a working class NY neighborhood in his fancy car. He gets a job as a cleaner in a second rate burger place, he fancies the owner's daughter, but she already has a suitor, who is cooler than he is. Said like this, is sounds uninteresting, but all the gags, situations,dialogues and acting make this work in inexplicable ways.Eddie Murphy is great in his different roles in the film. Arsenio Hall, cheeky and hilarious, and the perfect counterbalance to Eddie. Earl Jones regal as always, Amos is very sweet, and Eriq La Salle is just totally hateable in his role of Mr shiny curls. These days movie studios spend millions on digital flare, but they lack something basic: imagination, a good sense of humour, and the right actors to make magic happen out of the simplest of scripts.

Eddie Murphy was at the peak of his career when he made this movie. Which says a lot about it - the studio was looking for an Eddie Murphy vehicle to get him into the theaters, stat, and they threw this mess together as a result. One might question the fantastic castle the prince lived in during his years in Africa, as Africa is not known for castles. Rather, he more likely lived in a mud hut, but one larger than the other mud huts in his village. The vanity that an African prince somehow lived in the same sort of luxury enjoyed by royalty in western Europe is an insult to the intelligence of the audience, who surely must notice the lack of programs about "The Great Castles of Africa" on the AWE channel. Next, there is the Bruce Lee-esque fighting the prince engages in during the altercation at the restaurant. Again, Africa has no known martial arts tradition. Certainly, there is plenty of violence in Africa, but the brutality of child soldiers swinging machetes and inter-tribal limb-lopping is far from what Eddie portrayed in the fight scene.I think there's a lot of wishful thinking in this movie. Much of it centers around wishing the studio could throw a bunch of audience-pandering into a script, stick a star's name on the poster, and make a fortune. In at least the profitability sense, they succeeded, but this is not a good movie. Sad that it's one of the best Eddie managed to make.