The nominations for the 94th annual Academy Awards were announced this morning. Jane Campion’s Western The Power of the Dog leads the list with 12 nods, including Best Picture, Best Director, and acting nominations for Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, and Kodi Smit-McPhee.
Coming 2 America, the sequel to Eddie Murphy’s beloved 1988 star vehicle, earned a nomination for Mike Marino, Stacey Morris, and Carla Farmer’s work in Makeup and Hairstyling. The film was directed by Memphian Craig Brewer. Upon its release in January, 2021, Coming 2 America became became Amazon Studios biggest hit to date. You can read the story behind its making in this Memphis Flyer cover story.
Coming 2 America will compete in the Hair and Makeup category against Disney’s Cruella, Denis Villaneuve’s sci-fi epic Dune, the Jessica Chastain-led biopic The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and Ridley Scott’s melodrama House of Gucci. Brewer’s 2005 film Hustle & Flow earned a Best Original Song Academy Award for Three Six Mafia’s “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” and a Best Actor nomination for star Terrance Howard.
Best Picture nominees also included Dune, which earned a total of 10 nominations. Kenneth Brannaugh’s period drama Belfast was nominated in both Best Picture and Best Director categories, as well as Best Supporting Actress for Judi Dench and Supporting Actor for Ciarán Hinds. Adam McKay’s climate change satire Don’t Look Up, another Best Picture nominee, was also listed for Best Original Score, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Film Editing. Will Smith earned a Best Actor nominee for sports flick and Best Picture nominee King Richard. Paul Thomas Anderson’s 70’s rom-com Licorice Pizza received both Best Picture and Best Director noms, as did Ryuske Hamaguchi’s meditative Drive My Car, which was also Japan’s entry in the Best International Feature category. Steven Spielberg’s re-adaptation of West Side Story made him the first person to be nominated for Best Director in six different decades, while Ariana DeBose was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Anita. Gueillermo del Toro’s carnival noir Nightmare Alley, and Sundance hit CODA rounded out the Best Picture nods.
Elsewhere, Flee, Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s story of an Afghan refugee named Amin Nawabi, made history as the first film to ever earn nominations in the Best Documentary, Best Animated, and Best International Feature categories.
It’s really impossible to overstate how huge a star Eddie Murphy was in the 1980s. At the beginning of the decade, he single-handedly saved Saturday Night Live after the original cast—and the audience—had moved on. He made his big-screen debut in 1982’s 48 Hours; two years later, he was so big he turned down Ghostbusters for Beverly Hills Cop, which became the highest grossing comedy in history.
In 1988, Murphy, by then fully in control of his career, made Coming to America. The big-budget comedy ($36 million, or $81 million in 2021 dollars) was based on a character he created, Prince Akeem Joffer, the scion of a fictional African country who bucks the tradition of arranged marriage and comes to Queens in search of a liberated American woman to be an equal partner. It was directed by John Landis, the pop cinema genius behind The Blues Brothers and the heady Murphy vehicle, Trading Places. Landis perfected the hangout movie, where plot was secondary to gags and character moments to help the audience identify with the movie star, and created worlds you want to live in. Modern superhero movies take a lot from Landis’ approach. The film was a huge success, earning the 2021 equivalent of $790 million.
Prince Akeem returns to Queens in Coming 2 America.
Eventually, Murphy, with no more worlds to conquer, lost interest in stardom and drifted off to raise his ten children. In 2019, Murphy mounted a comeback with the help of ace screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. Dolemite is My Name gave him the opportunity to play his idol, underground comedy legend Rudy Ray Moore. Directed by Memphian Craig Brewer, Dolemite was universally praised, and generated Oscar buzz. Most importantly, working with Brewer on material he cared about seemed to rejuvenate the reluctant superstar.
The Return of the King: Eddie Murphy’s Prince Akeem ascends to the throne in Coming 2 America.
Exactly why Coming to America became an enduring classic, and what that says about the culture, is too big a subject to tackle in a newspaper review. (Come to my TED Talk!) One clue can be found in Black Panther. The vision of Zamunda, Prince Akeem’s fully functioning, wealthy African nation state, owes a lot to the comic book Wakanda. Murphy and Brewer recognize this, and use the long-brewing sequel as an opportunity to throw a hangout party in the aspirational African paradise. Most of the original cast is back, first and foremost Arsenio Hall, whose turn as Semmi, Prince Akeem’s put-upon sidekick, made him a star. The Murphy-Hall comic duo drove Coming to America. They played multiple roles, all of which clicked perfectly. Coming 2 America takes those characters out for a victory lap. The wisecracking old guys in the barber shop are now very old, but still cutting heads. Hall’s Reverend Brown is still saving souls on discount in Queens, and he now has a Zamundan counterpart in a shaman named Baba. And you’ll be pleased to hear Murphy’s unknown soul sensation Randy Watson is still fronting Sexual Chocolate.
Murphy (right) in costume as the old Jewish guy in the barber shop.
Brewer’s filmmaking superpower is that he can get a good performance out of a fire plug. Coming 2 America is a star vehicle, but all Brewer films are ensemble works, because he pays equal attention to the bit players. As Queen Lisa, Shari Headley picks up with Murphy like they’ve been married for 30 years. John Amos, a TV legend from Good Times pours his heart into a scene with his regal son-in-law. James Earl Jones is magnificent as King Joffe, whose premature funeral provides the cameo-heavy, musical set piece — Brewer’s forte.
Teyana Taylor and Wesley Snipes in Coming 2 America.
First among the newcomers in the sprawling cast is Wesley Snipes, who steals the show every time he cakewalks into the palace as General Izzi, Akeem’s rival from the nation of Nexdoria. SNL alums Leslie Jones and Tracy Morgan practically ooze charisma as the new American cousins. Jermaine Fowler as Lavelle, the bastard son Akeem must retrieve from Queens, has the unenviable job of retracing Akeem’s arc from the original, choosing a romance with the peasant Mirembe (Nomzamo Mbatha) over an arranged marriage with Nexdorian princess Bopoto (Teyana Taylor).
Wesley Snipes, Jermaine Fowler, and Leslie Jones show off Ruth E. Carter’s costume design.
Brewer is not a comedy director, but armed with Ruth E. Carter, arguably the greatest working costume designer, and Empire shooter Joe Williams, he creates a lavish Zamundan background for his stars to bust out the schtick. Murphy mainstreamed raunchy Black comedy, but much of what passed for edgy in 1988 looks crassly sexist now, even in the context of the ostensibly feminist elements of the story. The sequel tries to strike a more inclusive tone by teaching Akeem the same lessons about the drawbacks of the patriarchy his father learned during the Reagan era.
Shari Headley, Arsenio Hall, and Eddie Murphy
Coming 2 America lacks the depth of Dolemite is My Name, but it never aspires to reach it. This is a pop confection whose only goal is to entertain as broadly as possible. Everyone from Murphy on down look like they’re having the time of their lives, and when you visit Zamunda, you may find their happiness infectious.
Coming 2 America is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
The Return of the King: Eddie Murphy Rules in Coming 2 America
Memphis director Craig Brewer has been secretly developing a film about Rudy Ray Moore for Netflix.
The film will star Eddie Murphy as Moore, the Los Angeles street comedian who gained fame as a fast talking pimp named Dolemite, who was featured in three groundbreaking blacksploitation films in the 1970s. This will only be Murphy’s second live action movie appearance since 2012.
David Shankbone – flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10220764
Eddie Murphy
Brewer will be directing from a script by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. The writers specialize in left-field biographical material, having penned The People vs. Larry Flynt, Ed Wood, Big Eyes, Man On The Moon, and The People vs. O.J. Simpson. In addition to filming The People vs. Larry Flynt in Memphis, Karaszewski is also a frequent guest and jurist at the Indie Memphis Film Festival. C. Neil Scott from Columbia, SC, US CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5183785
Rudy Ray Moore aka Dolemite
Brewer’s made-in-Memphis 2005 film Hustle & Flow was a box office hit that earned an Academy Award for Best Song and a Best Actor nomination for star Terrance Howard. He has recently been writing and directing episodes for the Fox TV hit Empire and producing the You Look Like comedy show in Memphis for independent studio Gunpowder and Sky. According to a report in Deadline Hollywood, shooting for the as-yet untitled Rudy Ray Moore film will begin in Los Angeles on June 12.
In his 1983 HBO comedy special, Delirious, Eddie Murphy had a bit about why the protagonists of horror movies are always white. Black people, he said, would just run at the first sign of supernatural trouble. He imagined a black couple inserted into the Amityville Horror scenario, buying a house that turned out to be haunted. “Oh, baby, this is beautiful. We got a chandelier up here, kids outside playing, the neighborhood is beautiful. …”
Then a spectral voice whispers “Get oooout.”
“Too bad we can’t stay!”
I don’t know if that’s where Jordan Peele got the name for his killer new horror flick, Get Out, but it makes sense. Both Murphy and Peele are black comedy geniuses in the vein of Richard Pryor, so Peele almost certainly remembers Murphy’s routine. Get Out runs with Murphy’s basic premise — that the black guy is never the protagonist in mainstream horror movies — and teases out the full implications. On the surface, the joke is that white people act stupid in horror movies, and that black people would be smarter in those situations. Ha ha, my team is better than your team. But the deeper joke is that white people are so swaddled in privilege, they can’t imagine anything bad could really happen to them when the house whispers “Get out!,” but black people, who get the shaft every day, are rightfully more paranoid.
Allison Williams and Daniel Kaluuya star in Jordan Peele’s new horror film, Get Out.
For the younger crowd reading, yes, Eddie Murphy was once a cutting-edge stand-up comedian with something to say, not just the Nutty Professor. Peele is in the same place in his career that Eddie Murphy was in 1983: trying to successfully manage a transition from TV to the movies. Murphy morphed into an action-comedy leading man, while Peele seems much more interested in being behind the camera. If Get Out is any indication, this is a wise move.
I’m a firm believer that if you can do comedy, you can do anything. Comedy is just technically harder than drama; so much depends on precise timing, crisp delivery, and a perfect reveal. These are also the tools of horror, so I wonder why it’s taken so long to see a comedian make the genre move. Peele is going to be the biggest boost for the horror comedy genre since the coming of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead. But Raimi’s idea of horror comedy is anarchic slapstick, while Peele is following his own race relations muse.
Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) is getting ready for a trip to rural New York to meet his girlfriend Rose’s (Allison Williams) parents. Since Chris is black and Rose is white, his friend, Rod (LilRel Howery), warns him to not to go. Obviously, this upper-class white girl’s parents are going to freak out when they find out she’s dating a black guy. But Chris and Rose are quite smitten with each other, and he feels like he’s got to get over this hurdle in their relationship. Besides, Rose urges, her parents are totally cool. Her dad, Dean (Bradley Whitford), is a doctor, and her mom, Missy (Catherine Keener), is a psychotherapist. They’re educated professionals, so they’re naturally liberals. Dean, Rose assures Chris, would have voted for a third term of Obama if he could! Later, when Dean repeats the same line to Chris, it sounds rehearsed — one of the many red flags that slowly raise Chris’ paranoia level past the “GET OUT!” threshold. Turns out, Rod was right: Chris shouldn’t have gone home to meet the parents, but not for the reason Rod thought. He envisioned a nightmare weekend of microagressions and racist sneers for Chris. Instead, our hero finds himself in a nest of gaslighting hypno-slavers with dashes of Re-Animator and Being John Malkovich for existential seasoning.
From the John Carpenter references (Rose’s last name is Armitage, which was Carpenter’s pen name for They Live) to the finely tuned tonal clashes that make an innocuous garden party into a skin-crawling creepshow, Peele shows his total control of the proceedings. By working on both the level of social satire and scary horror flick, Get Out is one of the finest directorial debuts in recent memory.