Coming To America...Lives UP

No one should grow out of their early 90s Eddie Murphy phase

By Jess Latterman

Raise your hand if you realized Coming to America was Rated R? 

Yeah, I didn’t think so. 

Turns out an entire swath of 40-somethings grew up watching this R-rated comic classic as 10-year olds (or younger) and we are better for it. When we revisited Coming to America on the Live UP podcast we spent ample time processing our surprise over the rating. We retroactively clutched our pearls - how could we have possibly been allowed to watch this movie so young, before moving on to the disbelief phase questioning whether the rating changed over time (it hadn’t). Dear parents, I’m not going to judge if you make a different choice but I was 20 F-bombs and 1 sex-with-bathers reference in with my 6-year old before I bothered to check the rating. I did turn the movie off at this point more due to the desire of avoiding my kid being the one to drop F-bombs at school than thinking it was R-rated level inappropriate.

Mom of the year here...

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The R is really just there for the abundance of cursing and occasional reference to sex. And you can loosen that clench on your pearls since most of us 40-somethings watched this on network TV. But even if we hadn’t - who cares. The movie was, and still is, a comedic paradise. Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall are still funny in their main roles not to mention all the other characters I forgot they also played. The charm, making fun of soul glow and the general frog-turns-into-prince plot point all live up. Also, Darryl (Eriq La Salle) still sucks. 

The top moments that had me grinning from ear to ear:

1. "When you think of garbage, think of Akeem" is so much better than a swipe right

2. Telegrams!

Just the idea of telegrams is now funny, but the telegram lady coaxing Semmi (Arsenio Hall) into asking for a "cool million" like its NBD deserves some sort of comic Oscar for them both.

3. Samuel L. Jackson because Samuel L. Jackson

4. Patrice in general

My memory totally underrated her - she's a troublemaker and we all collectively like it.

I'm sure I left out your favorite funny moments. You'll have to just watch it again, but maybe not with your 6-year old. Hear more about our not exactly professional review and scoring of Coming to America on the Live UP podcast.

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