Coming 2 America ruins the original film's Randy Watson joke by falling into the nostalgia trap. Played by Eddie Murphy, the character closes out the 2021 Amazon Prime sequel with a musical performance, one that wins over the crowd at the wedding reception for Queens native Lavelle Junson (Jermaine Fowler) and his African bride, Mirembe (Nomzamo Mbatha). Coming 2 America's Randy Watson sequence allows for a happy ending, but it's not thematically consistent with the character's portrayal in the 1988 franchise-starter, Coming to America.
Randy Watson first appears in Coming to America during a performance sequence for Black Awareness Week. He's framed as a tragic fool character, evidenced primarily by the crowd's reaction to his music. Randy performs a rendition of Whitney Houston's 1985 single "The Greatest Love of All," with Murphy using his natural singing voice and incorporating stage bravado to underline the character's lack of self-awareness. The sequence comedically complements previous barbershop moments in which Murphy plays an elderly, white Jewish man named Saul and a Black character named Clarence. Importantly, the entire crowd sits in silence during Randy's performance, aside from Sweets (Clint Smith) - the new friend of Coming to America's protagonists Akeem (Murphy) and Semmi (Arsenio Hall).
In Coming 2 America, Murphy's reprisal of Clarence and Saul benefits the film because the portrayals align with the original movie. The characters appear in their natural setting, a New York barbershop, and their appearance is preceded by the joke that some things in Queens haven't changed since Akeem's last visit decades prior. With Murphy's character reprisal as Randy, however, Coming 2 America unfortunately doesn't use the singer for mid-movie comedic relief, but rather as a way to appeal to the audience with movie-ending nostalgia. It's revealed that Akeem invited Randy to Africa for a wedding reception performance, which not only betrays the evolution of Murphy's main Coming 2 America character from a traditionalist to a progressive King, but also doesn't make much sense when considering that Randy is such a buffoonish character in the original film. Unfortunately, the Coming 2 America screenwriters favor nostalgia over logic, and try to justify Randy's crowd-pleasing appearance by revealing that he's the cousin of Uncle Reem (Tracy Morgan), the man who essentially raised Akeem's New York-born son, Lavelle.
Coming 2 America's Randy Watson sequence is representative of the film's collective flaws. Murphy and company merely re-hash familiar concepts, and then mask their formula with a thin exploration of gender roles in African society. Coming 2 America does indeed position Fowler and KiKi Layne (Akeem's daughter, Meeka) as the potential leads of a third movie, but the sequel's overall execution feels uninspired and often lazy. When Randy takes the stage to perform "We Are Family," the moment informs the audience that the film really shouldn't be taken that seriously, which negatively impacts the most progressive moments involving female characters like Meeka, Queen Lisa (Shari Headley), and Mary (Leslie Jones) in the Amazon Prime sequel.
Nostalgia-themed filmmaking can be effective, at least if the screenwriters and directors factor in various audience perspectives. It works when the dialogue feels natural, fresh, and there's a clear reason for it, whereas nostalgic commentaries done for the sake of it or that simply rely on re-hashing what came before can come off as awkward and stiff. In Coming 2 America, Randy Watson's cameo appearance seems like a weak attempt to connect with the audience through nostalgia, and also a missed opportunity to spotlight a strong female performer like Teyana Taylor, who delivers a show-stopping performance earlier in the film as General Izzi's daughter, Bopoto.
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