Coming to America
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: June 29, 1988 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
47
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 16 Critic Reviews
Positive:
6
Mixed:
6
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
Washington PostDesson Howe
The main pleasure in America comes in the romancing of prince and pauper. But the comedy is a mere handmaiden. Read full review
60
Washington PostHal Hinson
Coming to America isn't as aggressively awful as the "Cop" films or "The Golden Child," but at least in those films there was something to react to. In making Coming to America, Murphy seems to have set his sights on the lowest prize imaginable. He aspires to blandness. Read full review
60
EmpireGavin Bainbridge
Landis' latest keeps you laughing not with it's originality (of which there is little) but with it's confidence to out-joke it's predecessors on this much-trodden ground. Read full review
50
USA TodayDonna Brit
There are some laughs, Murphy is appealing and the ancient theme of love conquering all is beguiling. But America's mean-spiritedness lingers after its pastel-pretty ending.
50
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Murphy takes on a softer edge than usual this time: the plot recalls a Jeanette MacDonald operetta of the Depression, the mythical African country looks like a Beverly Hills fever dream, and, true to Murphy's idealized black middle-class view of things, everybody gets what he wants without much fuss or sacrifice, and virtually the only poor people in evidence are white. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterDuane Byrge
Coming to America is the filmic equivalent of using a Maserati to go to the corner grocery store — Murphy's colossal comic gifts and Landis' countercultural sensibilities are largely wasted, never pushed to the floor in this idling, curbed comedy. Read full review
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