Some thoughts on ‘Coming to America 2’ Spoilers/Don’t read if you haven’t seen it!

Ok so I could have done without the ‘using people as sex slaves’ bit. That was trashy and disturbing in the first movie, even more so now. In 2021 in every culture around the world everyone knows this is NOT ok, or should know. Yet they made it a point to include it, and spent even more time on it than the first movie!

The colorist comments towards women the elderly barbers made, they could have left that out too. 30ish years later and they’re still talking about what shade of women they like, really?? And the king calling his son a ‘bastard’ every five minutes was in extremely poor taste given that the out-of-wedlock birth rate amongst African Americans is over 70 percent, and a bit over 50 percent in white Americans and other groups. Though used as a general insult, few people of any color/ethnic group use it to describe the children of unwed parents anymore. It’s just not used this way publicly and it’s considered very rude to do so.

Murphy himself had a child out of wedlock with Mel B, you know from the Spice Girls. Does he call his daughter a bastard? Did he think how this might make the children of unwed parents feel, particularly black children (because you know a ton of black people tuned in to watch this)? Imagine kids of today thinking this movie was going to be a sort of comedic Wakanda moment they could take pride in only to see this black king repeatedly calling his black child a bastard. Sure, it’s the king’s character/upbringing/culture or whatever, but after once or twice that point would have been made, why KEEP saying it. I found that disturbing.