“Coming To America” is one of the funniest films I’ve ever seen, up there with the likes of Charlie Chaplin and “Dr. Strangelove”. It’s a movie that stars Eddie Murphy (“Trading Places”, “Shrek”), who like Steve Martin (“Roxanne”), Robin Williams (“Flubber”) and Jim Carrey (“The Mask”) has appeared in many films that undermine his talents but this is pure comedic genius.

In “Coming To America”, Murphy stars as Prince Akeem, who leaves his native Africa in order to find a woman, who will truly appreciate him by travelling to Queens, New York (that’s already funny). He pretends to be just some guy rather than an exotic member of royalty as he works in McDonald’s (not the McDonald’s) but his father (James Earl Jones “Star Wars”) isn’t too far behind.

Eddie Murphy is hilarious as Akeem, he has a great sense of innocence but that’s just one of the many characters he plays here. In one scene he plays Akeem, a loudmouth barber and an old white man. Murphy never uses the joke about being black here and benefits from that. Arsenio Hall deserves some credit for his multiple roles including the crazy Reverend Brown. I also love James Earl Jones and John Amos (“Die Hard 2”) as they provide plenty of laughs. Watch out for Cuba Gooding Jr. (“Jerry Maguire”) and Samuel L. Jackson (“Pulp Fiction”)

Director John Landis (“The Blues Brothers”) hits a homerun with this movie. “Coming To America” has plenty of verbal, visual, witty, laugh-out-loud and just generally excellent moments of humour scattered throughout. It’s a movie that takes an overused formula but masters it by not going for all the usual stuff, we don’t see him visiting monuments or desperately trying to embrace the foreign culture. It’s a shame Murphy’s career would later descend into absolute rubbish much like some of his fellow comedic actors but at least he gave us some movies like this.