Coming to America

Coming to America (1988) follows the prince of an invented African country, Zamunda, coming to New York to find a wife of his own choosing. A wife has been arranged for Akeem but he does not want to marry someone raised to obey. He arrives in Queens with his attendant, takes the worst apartment he can find on purpose, and gets a job in a burger restaurant. The trick is in the casting. Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall play multiple characters; the men in the barbershop are all two people. Rick Baker's makeup was extraordinary for the time and was nominated for an Oscar. The McDowell's section, a burger chain copying another chain while insisting it is different, is the best joke in it. The lawsuit behind the film entered legal history. The writer Art Buchwald sued Paramount, saying he had pitched them a story called King for a Day years earlier and the film had come from it. The court agreed. What followed is more interesting: Paramount argued that despite 288 million dollars in revenue the film had made no net profit under the contract's definition, so nothing was owed. The court found that accounting method unconscionable. Rather than appeal, Paramount settled for nine hundred thousand dollars. So this film is the case that put Hollywood's profit accounting into the court record. John Landis directed. It runs 117 minutes. Good for: eighties comedy, Eddie Murphy, and romantic comedy. Less good for: some jokes have dated and the pace sags in the middle.