$.98 Movie (Non-)Review: Coming to America 2

The process of creating art is hard.  Creating art by way of an assembly line is terribly difficult.  And creating art that finds widespread acceptance among consumers is exceedingly rare.  Eddie Murphy is one of the few people who have managed to pull off the elusive trifecta of creating a body of work over decades which is of consistently high quality and is commercially successful.  He has even pushed the envelope on his considerable talent with noteworthy dramatic performances as in Dreamgirls. The point here being Murphy has earned the benefit of presenting us with occasional flops. 

But Coming to America 2 sucks.  I mean... it's really awful.  It's Best Defense bad; Meet Dave bad.  It's not as if I held expectations the sequel would recapture the lightning in a bottle that was the first movie.  I don't believe I was influenced too much by the advance hype.  I was hoping for a mildly entertaining update on the lives of Akeem, Semmi, and other characters from the original; something I'd watch just to pass time.  However, CTA2 failed to meet even this minimal standard.  I actually passed out after about 35-40 minutes out of sheer boredom.  And to think I turned away from my normal routine of Sunday morning public affairs TV for this.

I'm kinda, sorta okay now with having watched this bomb though, because as I stated earlier Murphy's body of work earns him the occasional pass.  I did get an extra hour of sleep.  I dreamed I was a studio executive about to reject a proposal for a sequel to a classic movie or TV series... or worse, a remake.