Like any long-awaited follow-up to a beloved comedy, Coming 2 America boasts a fair number of appearances by some of the original film’s funniest fan-favorite characters, many of them played, once again, by Eddie Murphy. However, more glaringly recognizable is the absence of actors such as Samuel L. Jackson and several others from 1988’s Coming to America cast.
Director Craig Brewer’s Amazon Prime original sequel introduces a slew of new characters, such as the long lost son of Eddie Murphy’s King Akeem Joffer (played by Jermaine Fowler), his boisterous mother (Leslie Jones) and uncle (Tracy Morgan), and a heavily made-up Arsenio Hall as Baba. The sequel even relishes in some eye-opening cameos by Morgan Freeman, En Vogue, Salt-N-Pepa, and Gladys Knight (all in the same sequence, too). However, despite what these newcomers and surprise guests brought to the film, you have to wonder if they could have left some room for a few Coming to America stars to reprise what some would call their best-known roles.