Coming to America: 2 Disc Royal Edition (1988)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Featurette-Prince-ipal Photography: The Coming Together of America Featurette-Fit for Akeem: The Costumes of Coming to America Featurette-Character Building: The Many Faces of Rick Baker Featurette-Composing America: The Musical Talents of Nile Rodgers Featurette-A Vintage Sit-Down with Eddie and Arsenio Theatrical Trailer Gallery-Photo
Rating
Year Of Production	1988
Running Time	112:15
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (60:00) Dual Disc Set	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Programme
Region Coding	4	Directed By	John Landis
Studio Distributor	Paramount Home Entertainment	Starring	Eddie Murphy Arsenio Hall James Earl Jones John Amos Madge Sinclair Shari Headley Paul Bates Eriq La Salle Frankie Faison Vanessa Bell Calloway Louie Anderson Allison Dean Sheila Johnson
Case	Amaray-Opaque-Dual
RPI	?	Music	Nile Rodgers

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English German Spanish French Hebrew Croatian Italian Portuguese	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes
		Action In or After Credits	Yes

    Not satisfied with the shallow, but luxurious, life and arranged marriage that lie ahead of him, Prince Akeem (Eddie Murphy, back when he was actually funny) convinces his father, King Jaffe Joffer (James Earl Jones), to let him go to America to "sow his wild oats". With his manservant-come-friend Semmi (Arsenio Hall) in tow, Akeem heads to New York in search of love.

    So as to be sure Akeem finds true love rather than another gold-digger, the pair of travellers pose as poor African immigrants, shack up in a cheap apartment and find jobs working for a local burger joint called McDowell's. Akeem soon falls for the restaurant owner's eldest daughter and sets about wooing her, all the while keeping up the charade. Unfortunately, Semmi has a lot of difficulty adjusting to the bohemian lifestyle and creates havoc for Akeem, particularly when the King gets wind that something may be going on.

    At it's core, Coming to America is a relatively formulaic romantic comedy, but it works at its own pace and is filled with first rate humour. The film has weathered the test of time surprisingly well.

    In the grand scheme of things, it is hard to know whether to love or hate Coming to America. On one hand it is very funny - easily one of Murphy's best movies. On the other hand it is the film whose success opened the floodgates for the torrent of lame "comedies", in which Eddie Murphy plays every second role in a different latex suit, that have plagued our screens for years since. Personally, I would err towards the side of love, but I do feel a little dirty for it!

Video

    The film is presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio and is 16x9 enhanced.

    The movie looks pretty good for a film that is nearly 20 years old, but is far from reference standard. The image is reasonably sharp and a moderate level of film grain is visible throughout the movie. There is a good degree of detail in shadows and black areas.

    The colour in the film is a little pale by modern standards, but consistent for the duration of the movie. This really serves only to highlight the age of the film, as the paler palette is fairly typical for films of the era.

    A mild telecine wobble is noticeable over the opening credits, but not during the film itself. Film artefacts are visible fairly often throughout the film. Most are simple small dust-sized particles that aren't too distracting, but there is a rather large splotch at 17:34. There are no noticeable MPEG compression related artefacts thanks to a consistently high bitrate throughout the film.

    The English subtitles are well timed, but not quite word-for-word accurate. The general meaning of the lines is conveyed in the subtitles, but many small words, that help to make up a characters mannerism, are missed. For example, much of Akeem's slightly awkward dialogue, which helps to define his character as an African of privilege, is simplified to lose all the personal touches.

    This is an RSDL disc. The layer change occurs between scenes at 60:00 and was not noticeable on my equipment.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are four audio tracks available; English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 Kbps), French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192 Kbps), Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192 Kbps) and Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192 Kbps).

    The dialogue is clearly audible and well synchronised.

    Funk legend Nile Rodgers' score has made a great transition to DVD. It sounds crystal clear and works as well today as it did in 1988. The score comprises quite a number of different styles, from the funk that Rodgers is best known for, to drum-heavy faux-traditional African music.

    Though the film has been given a token 5.1 remix, it is barely noticeable. The only time I found the surrounds noticeable was during a scene featuring fireworks, when one lowly firework effect could be heard in the rear right speaker. The subwoofer fared a little better, but mostly only picked up a little bottom end from the music. Coming to America is not the sort of film that needs fancy audio, but you have to wonder what the point of the 5.1 remaster was if the extra channels weren't going to be used. The original stereo audio is not present on the disc, so at least you can take solace in the fact that the 5.1 track is fairly similar to the original audio.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    The special features are all on a second, single layered, disc (although the theatrical trailer features on both discs).

Prince-ipal Photography: The Coming Together of America Featurette (24:41)

    This is essentially part 1 of a 'Making Of' featurette, with three other featurettes on the disc making up the other parts. Each of these 'Making Of' featurettes covers a different topic, but also contains a lot of general information about the production. This particular featurette is the most general of the four and covers the origin of the film as well as production itself. It is interesting stuff, but drags a little as it goes on.

Fit for Akeem: The Costumes of Coming to America Featurette (18:06)

    This particular featurette focuses on the costumes, sets and general style of the film. There is some interesting stuff here, but not enough to justify an 18 minute running time.

Character Building: The Many Faces of Rick Baker Featurette (12:56)

    This featurette focuses on the prosthetics created by Rick Baker to allow Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall play numerous characters in the film. This is a fairly interesting featurette, and certainly helped by the fact that many of the characters being moulded are so realistic.

Composing America: The Musical Talents of Nile Rodgers Featurette (11:09)

    This featurette focuses on the score of the film, but in doing so covers many different facets of the whole film. This featurette manages to remain interesting for the duration.

A Vintage Sit-Down with Eddie and Arsenio Featurette (5:39)

    An on-set interview with Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall. Sadly, the pair are a little restrained for the duration and the interview isn't nearly as entertaining as you would expect from these two in their prime.

Theatrical Trailer (2:40)

    A standard theatrical trailer, presented in a 1:85:1 aspect ratio, but not 16x9 enhanced.

Photo Gallery

    50-odd stills from the movie itself and a few taken on set. The images are fairly small, but well presented, and need to be navigated with the remote.

    The Region 1 edition varies only in available audio and subtitles. The Region 1 edition features the films original 2.0 Stereo audio track (as well as the 5.1 remaster found in Region 4), but it misses the Spanish and Italian language tracks. The Region 1 edition only features English, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles, all of which are found on the Region 4 edition along with many more European language tracks.

    I would have to call this comparison a draw. While the original English 2.0 language track would be nice to have, it is not essential and the additional languages on the Region 4 release well and truly make up for its omission.

    A classic romantic comedy, from an era when Eddie Murphy had artistic integrity and was actually genuinely funny.

    There is a solid package of fairly entertaining extras. The video presentation is good considering the movie's age, though not great. The audio is adequate, quite clear but only a 5.1 remastered English soundtrack is available.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall