'Coming 2 America:' smiles more than laughs

    

    Zamunda -- the fictional African country that Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall called home in Coming to America -- tops my list of places I never thought merited a second visit.  The first movie was funny but didn't exactly leave a ton of unanswered questions.

    Coming 2 America emerges anyway and fans of the first movie probably will be happy that it has.

   A word on Murphy, who became a major movie star during the 1980s and 1990s, but fell off during the 21st Century when his movies often were less than dominant. Dolemite Is My Name (2019) received mostly positive reviews, but a Murphy movie no longer felt like a big-screen event.

    Still, Murphy has remained a revered star in the comedy universe and -- at least in my mind -- and Coming 2 America has the feel of what in non-Covid times would have been considered a major commercial statement.

    This time, it's back to Zamunda with only the briefest of stops in Queens, where Murphy and Hall don tons of makeup and reprise the characters who occupied the My T Sharp barbershop of the first installment. 

   Mostly, though, the movie flows in a less hilarious but generally palatable direction.

   In the original, Murphy's Prince Akeem came to America looking for  love. In the new movie, the borough of Queens heads to Africa, where Akeem's illegitimate son is groomed to take over the Zamundan throne. And, no, the prince didn't know he had a son and heir.

   Akeem's son Lavelle Junson (Jermaine Fowler) dominates much of the movie. A typical Queens resident, Lavelle is lured to Zamunda by the promise of wealth and power -- not to mention the urging of his rapacious mother (Leslie Jones), the woman with whom Prince Akeem had a long-forgotten encounter.

    Lavelle struggles to adapt to Zamundan ways, which require him to pass a series of tests to prove his nobility. An encounter with a lion proves the funniest of the new prince's trials. If he survives cutting the whiskers off a lion, he must be the real deal.

   There's also a question about whether Lavelle will marry the voluptuous daughter of rival King Izzi, played by  Wesley Snipes who demonstrated his flair for comedy in Dolemite. For Izzy, it's either unity via marriage or war.

   Tracy Morgan signs on as Uncle Reem, the Queens-based father figure in Lavelle's life. 

   And, of course, Hall returns as Semmi.

   Also back: Shari Headley as Queen Lisa, the love of Akeem's life and now the mother of his three daughters, one of whom (KiKi Layne) would be the next ruler of Zamunda were it not for the country's insistence that only males can ascend to the throne.

    James Earl Jones and John Amos also reprise roles from the first installment.

    I could go on, but you get the idea: The movie can feel stuffed to the breaking point in the way sequels sometimes do.

    Director Craig Brewer, who handled directing chores on Dolemite, mounts a slick, showy production that goes heavy on musical numbers and includes cameos from Morgan Freeman and Trevor Noah, as well as musical appearances by Gladys Knight and Salt-N-Pepa.

     OK, enough.

     Coming 2 America isn't fall-down funny, but it has an infectiously likable vibe that makes the movie pleasurable enough as it traverses safe comic ground. Maybe that's why Coming 2 America left  me with a smile and no sharp regrets about a second visit to Zamunda.

These warriors are immortal ... well ... almost

     The Old Guard tempers generic superhero ploys with an undercurrent of sadness — not the sadness caused by witnessing casualties in the battle of good against evil, but the sorrow of warriors who are killed in battle and then are reborn as immortals. After a few centuries, not being able to die can become a drag.
     But unlike Tithonus, about whom Lord Alfred  Tennyson, wrote a great poem, these immortals don't age. Tennyson's Tithonus suffered from an oversight: He was granted immortality but forgot to include eternal youth.
     Victorian poetry aside, the immortals of Old Guard are curious creations: Although they can’t die, they do feel pain when they’re shot or stabbed. It takes a few moments for them to revive as their wounds, no matter how grave, miraculously heal. 

     And about that immortality: It comes with a proviso. Eventually, the ability to survive any attack wears off. So these “immortals” eventually will die -- not so much at the hands of a foe, but at the bidding of the relentless fate that chose them in the first place.

     Members of The Old Guard tend to be lonely, having long ago lost their closest loved ones and having endured hundreds of years of human history. 

     Led by Charlize Theron — as Andromache of Scythia or Andy, if you prefer — we meet this group of stalwarts when a CIA agent (Chiwetel Ejiofor) hires The Old Guard to carry out a dangerous mission in Somalia. 

     A group of male companions from different historical eras assists Andy; these include two men (Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli) who once killed each other in battle but who since have become deep friends and lovers. A fourth man (Matthias Schoenaerts) is a bit of a loner.

    The group’s dynamics are shaken up when a new member appears. A Marine brought to death's door in Afghanistan, Nile (Kiki Layne) plays an Old Guard newbie, a woman who must adjust to life as an immortal, as well as to the demands of her new colleagues.

     A bit cynical after centuries of being disappointed by humans, Theron’s Andy — also the oldest of the immortals — is clearly in charge.
    Director Gina-Prince Bythewood  (Love & Basketball) includes enough globe-hopping action to add summer blockbuster aura to the proceedings. (Old Guard  bows on Netflix on July 10).

     The movie falters when it comes to a screenplay that includes a profit-driven character who runs a big pharmaceutical company. Harry Melling plays Merrick, an egomaniac who wants to capture the entire Guard, extract DNA samples from them, and make a fortune with the miracle drug he's sure he can develop.

     A sense of fatigue marks the long-lived Andy, appropriate for the character, but a bit enervating, and some of the dialogue could have withstood rewriting.

     Having said all that, The Old Guard is the closest you can get these days to typical summer-movie fare -- and not feel bad about it.
     By the way, if you like Old Guard, the movie’s ending paves the way for a sequel that, I imagine, might surpass the original by finding something better for its surprisingly soulful characters to do than escape the clutches of a greedy corporate menace.

Love in the time of racism

In If Beale Street Could Talk, director Barry Jenkins adapts a James Baldwin novel that pits the innocence of lovers against soul-crushing racism.

If you stop to think about it, you might be hard-pressed to come up with a long list of movies that portray love with tenderness, soul-deep commitment, and true devotion.

Among other things, a tender depiction of such a love is precisely what distinguishes If Beale Street Could Talk from normal Hollywood fare. director Barry Jenkins' follow-up to his Oscar-winning Moonlight, has moments that are illuminated by the characters love for each other and by Jenkins' love for them.

But if Beale Street -- set in New York during the '70s -- only dealt with love, it would not be doing justice to the 1974 James Baldwin novel of the same name. If Beale Street Could Talk also assays the impact of racism on the innocence of two lovers who have known they should be together since childhood.

Tender feelings collide with harsh realities that test the devotion of a young man and woman who want little more than to live, raise a family and continue loving each other.

The casting of the couple obviously becomes crucial in a movie such as Beale Street and Jenkins' has done well. Stephan James portrays Alonzo, a.k.a. "Fonny," a 22-year-old with ambitions to make sculptures from wood. KiKi Layne portrays Tish, Fonny's 19-year-old fiancee and also the story's narrator.

Jenkins invites us to fall in love with this sweet couple and we do, but he also plans to break our hearts. Tish is pregnant and it's entirely possible that Fonny will be in jail when his child is born.

Set up by a racist cop (Ed Skrein), Fonny faces a false rape charge. Tish fights to clear his name. She knows that the Puerto Rican woman who identified Fonny in a line-up did so in a confused panic. Fonny wasn't even in the vicinity of the crime.

The movie contextualizes the relationship between Fonny and Tish by bringing their respective families into focus as it shifts between the present with Fonny awaiting trial in jail and the past in which Fonny and Tish developed their relationship.

Fonny's mother (Regina King) supports her pregnant daughter; her father (Colman Domingo) also makes his love for Tish clear; he understands that he's going to have to get involved with some hustling to raise money for Fonny's defense.

In an early scene, the two families meet and sparks fly. Fonny's religious mother (Aunjanue Ellis,) disdains Tish and treats her as a wanton woman who's ruining her son's life. Fonny's father (Michael Beach) takes a different view. He hauls off and belts his wife in the kisser, a slap that turns a comic scene into something harsh and harrowing.

Perhaps Baldwin was trying to highlight poles of belief within the black community: staunchly religious conservatism vs. love-infused tolerance, the latter born of an understanding about what's needed to carry on.

Brian Tyree Henry turns up as an old friend of Fonny's who has just been released from jail and who can't shake the emotional damage of incarceration. He didn't belong in jail any more than Fonny will.

Jenkins respectfully extends scenes to allow the actors to live within them, but some of them go on too long and you begin to feel the movie's length.

Maybe it doesn't matter because If Beale Street Could Talk doesn't feel rooted in a specific time and place as much as it feels like an extension of imagination lodged in an essential moment -- one built around a deep understanding of harsh American realities and an unconquerable capacity for hope and survival.

If Beale Street Could Talk poses a heartfelt and heartbreaking question: Why must two lovers pit their happiness against a world that doesn't want to give them a chance? That sounds like the trailer for a romance novel, but -- in this case -- it's an indictment of racism that tries to crush the sweetness out of everyday life.