Coming 2 America Director Responds to Rating Complaints

Coming 2 America is a PG-13 movie, and some fans were upset about that fact, but director Craig Brewer isn’t trying to hear it. The original picture had some room to play as an R-rated comedy. But, the filmmaker is asking that fans just don’t blindly discount his film before weighing it on the tone of the original during an interview with CinemaBlend. Coming 2 America has no problem referencing and at times mirroring the 1988 movie. Some of that is to get what Brewer calls a “fairy-tale feel” that ran throughout Coming to America. Prince Akeem was a very whimsical character when you really think about it. His travels through New York City weren’t always the best, but he found ways to find joy in even the rough parts. That’s what the director was striving for with his sequel effort. Even more interestingly, Coming 2 America still manages to net some bawdy laughs with risqué material despite that rating. Check out what the director had to say down below:

“We made a movie that was not necessarily bound by our rating. But it’s funny because I noticed that, you know, I’m like everybody else. I’ll look at Twitter and online, and people going, ‘Oh my God, what a travesty. This movie’s PG 13 and they’ve ruined it.’ But I would just argue that that’s not really true,” he explained. “If you’re really a fan of the first Coming to America … it has a little bit of this fairy tale theme. But the fairy tale element in the first movie that was so great was that Eddie’s Akeem was very innocent and naive and gentle, but he came to Queens and Queens was not. [laughs] and he loved everything that was even awful about Queens. And that was the humor in it.”

In some previous comments to CinemaBlend, Brewer also took some time to defend his star against people who say he cannot act.

“It really bothers me. And I feel that it’s even more stilted against Eddie because the problem that I think people have with Eddie is that they think that it’s easy for him,” Brewer explained. “I’m sure there are many things in Eddie’s life that feel easy. But what people don’t know is what I see, which is him sitting in his chair, in makeup, he’s putting on music, he’s getting into a place, he’s rehearsing these lines — you see him where he doesn’t fool around on set.”

He continued, “When you’re in between takes, he goes to his chair and you see him get into this trance where he is working and working and working. There’s craft there. And I worry that people think that like, ‘Oh, well, Eddie’s just showing up and being funny, like he’s always done.’ And that’s just not true. Yes, he’s showing up and being hilarious, but it’s not like he’s just flipping a switch.”

Do you feel like the sequel betrays the original? Let us know in the comments!