COMING 2 AMERICA
An uneven royal comedy with heart, crude content, and adult-only concerns.
Should You Watch It?
COMING 2 AMERICA has real warmth beneath its crude comedy. Its appealing characters and heartwarming drama celebrate family, positive father-child relationships, doing the right thing, finding true love, and giving equal treatment to daughters and sons. Some of its comedy is clean and funny.
The problem is that the movie is uneven and contains too much crude dialogue and foul language. The sexual references, innuendo, alcohol use, drug references, and mixed pagan worldview also make this a poor choice for children and young teens.
If you are a discerning adult who can handle those concerns and wants a light comedy with family-centered themes, you may find some merit here. For everyone else, especially families choosing a shared movie, wait for something cleaner at home.
The Story
NO SPOILERS — WE KEEP THE SURPRISESAkeem, the newly crowned king of Zamunda, needs a male heir to carry on his family’s traditions. He has three daughters, but a neighboring military leader threatens his country unless Akeem’s eldest daughter marries the leader’s son.
Then Akeem learns that he has a long-lost 31-year-old son living in New York City. He travels there with his right-hand man, Semmi, meets the son and his family, and brings him back to Zamunda. There, the young man must face a test to qualify as prince.
Is It Any Good?
Three stars means this is an appealing but uneven comedy. The movie has some clever comic concepts, clean funny moments, and appealing characters. Its touching drama about family, father-child relationships, true love, and doing the right thing gives the story genuine warmth.
But the execution is not consistently funny. Too much of the humor is crude, and the dialogue and foul language frequently overwhelm the movie’s better qualities. The result has heart, but it does not deliver its comedy as consistently as it should.
The Worldview
COMING 2 AMERICA presents a strong mixed pagan worldview. Its story centers on an African king who needs a male heir to avoid being dethroned and killed by a rival leader. The film also emphasizes honoring one’s country and traditions.
The movie’s stronger moral elements celebrate family, positive father-child relationships, doing the right thing, finding true love, and giving equal treatment to daughters and sons. However, the story also includes crude pagan content, foul language, sexual material, and light Christian symbols used during a church wedding. A later joke describes the church as a “crack house of God.”
The film includes Romantic, feminist ideas about bringing positive change and empowering females. These ideas are not radical or extreme, but they are part of the movie’s approach to family and leadership.
The film’s longing for family, belonging, and right relationships connects with Scripture’s call to love one another: “Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Corinthians 16:14).
The Content Guide
The specifics — spoilers included by nature — so you can judge for your own family.
Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements
Strong mixed pagan worldview in a comedy about an African king needing a male heir so he isn’t dethroned and killed by a rival leader of another country with lots of crude pagan content and foul language, but also some strong moral elements celebrating family, positive father-child relationships, doing the right thing, finding true love, and giving equal treatment to daughters and sons, with some talk about honoring one’s country and traditions, but also some Romantic, feminist ideas about bringing positive change and empowering females, plus light Christian symbols in one scene during a church wedding to a flashy black preacher’s storefront church, but later a woman jokes that the church is not a like a house of God, but more like a “crack house of God”
Foul Language
About 76 obscenities (including many uses of the “b” word for the lead character’s illegitimate son from a one-night stand), one GD in an outtake during the end credits, three light OMGs, two bleeped “f” words, clinical terms for sex organs are used several times, some borderline vulgarities, a lion passes gas in one scene, and a really old African religious leader spits a couple times to show his disdain for a younger middle-aged man
Violence
Some light comical and action violence includes a king’s long-lost son must cut some whiskers off a lion, and he’s chased by the lion to a trap that the would-be prince has set for the lion, lion tries to swat at the would-be prince in a bamboo cage for the big cat, people pretend to circumcise a young man, but it’s only a piece of meat, the young man faints to the floor after the prank is revealed, a military leader of an adjacent country repeatedly threatens to kill the king of another country if the king’s eldest daughter or son don’t marry one of his children, king practices stick fighting with his three daughters, king’s three daughters fight off the military leader of the neighboring country and his entourage who try to take over their father’s palace, eldest daughter is knocked down during the fight, and younger girl hits a male soldier in the crotch with a stick, man kicks another man, and a scenes of mock comical choking
Sex
Implied fornication results in a pregnancy, and the father reconnects with the son he didn’t know he had 30 years later, flippant references to being a prostitute in the past, many innuendoes about sex, some sensual dancing, dancer sings a song with three or so sexual references such as a reference to having a one-night stand, another song has sexual innuendoes and euphemisms, a band is called “Sexual Chocolate” and the singer mentions those words several times in a rendition of “We Are Family,” euphemistic references to sexual organs, and an older woman has a male attendant in her bath
Nudity
Upper male nudity in several scenes, scenes with female cleavage, and an implied nude man is attending an older woman in her fancy bath, but no explicit nudity shown
Alcohol Use
Alcohol use and drunkenness
Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse
No smoking, but some drug references regarding a one-night stand 30 years ago (includes woman blows marijuana smoke into man’s face in a flashback), a woman makes a joke about crack cocaine, and a reference about being treated for an oxycontin addiction;
Miscellaneous Immorality
A trick is pulled on a young man, some rude behavior, and a racist comment but rebuked.
Talk About It
Questions for the drive home, the dinner table, or the youth group.
The story values family and positive father-child relationships. What makes a parent-child relationship healthy and faithful?
Ephesians 6:4 · Colossians 3:21The film presents doing the right thing as an important choice. How can you pursue what is right when doing so costs you something?
Micah 6:8 · Romans 12:2The story emphasizes giving equal treatment to daughters and sons. How does Scripture describe the equal worth of men and women before God?
Genesis 1:27 · Galatians 3:28The film includes pagan ideas alongside light Christian symbols. How should Christians test the ideas and messages they encounter in entertainment?
1 Thessalonians 5:21–22 · Philippians 4:8The Final Word
COMING 2 AMERICA has appealing characters, clean funny moments, and genuine warmth about family and doing right. But its crude dialogue, foul language, sexual material, and uneven comedy make it unsuitable for children and young teens. For discerning adults, watch it at home if you choose: WAIT FOR HOME — ADULTS ONLY.
