James Earl Jones

  • Coming 2 America (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, June 2022) As someone who only moderately liked the original Coming to America, I’m not the target audience for a sequel. But Coming to America does have quite a following, and you can see follow-up Coming 2 America realigns itself to please that audience. Numerous call-backs and fannish references often grind the film to a crawl and don’t shore up the film’s shoddy plot foundations. But this is not a film made to be nitpicked – it’s pure fun for fans of the original, a sure vehicle for Eddie Murphy and something made to shore up Amazon Prime’s original offerings. As with the first film, this one is a black movie directed by a white director – but Craig Brewer’s filmography is far more black-themed than John Landis and –more importantly– he previously collaborated with Murphy on Dolemite is My Name, earning the actor some of his most positive reviews. Here, Murphy is back in full comedian mode in reprising his royal character. A shame, then, that the film is built on such a shaky excuse for a plot: as a royal succession plot taking place in the 2020s, there’s an obvious narrative dead-end in how “my daughter can’t become the king” – we know that’s going to be taken care of before the end. But watching Coming 2 America for plot is useless – it’s specifically made for the comic riffs, the musical moments and watching Murphy re-embrace a comic persona. If the plot is a ramshackle sequence of episodes, so what? Sure, it’s weird that the film ends up taking place largely in Africa aside from a few quick jaunts back to New York City, but so what – at least we’ve got a hilariously well-timed death sequence featuring James Earl Jones, a cover of “What a Man,” various good interludes and a good soundtrack. While Coming 2 America is far more markedly a mercenary product with contrived set-pieces and more than a few nonsensical tangents, I’m not that disappointed – it delivers entertainment, gets its actors a few chuckles and generally has enough going on to keep things interesting. But then again – this film wasn’t made for me, and that’s all right.

  • Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) I don’t often criticize a film’s set design, but then again Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold isn’t your usual film. It’s much, much worse than most of them. Even offered as a tongue-in-cheek take on the kinds of adventure films made red-hot in the 1980s by the success of the first two Indiana Jones films, this second Richard Chamberlain-as-Quatermain film is terrible no matter how you look at it. So terrible that some canyon action sequences are clearly shot in the studio with obvious flooring barely covered by dirt, taking away any tense of tension that it could have. So terrible that even the comedy falls down with a thud, looking more puzzling than amusing. So terrible that the dialogue is trash, the plot developments painful and even Cassandra Peterson can’t save the film’s last half. So terrible that you can’t even appreciate a young Sharon Stone as the female lead. So terrible that… well, you get it by now. It’s clear that the film aims far higher than what it can deliver on its budget and special effects: the “thrilling” adventure through the African landscape to reach a mysterious city feels like a cut-rate amusement park ride. The progressiveness of the 1980s compared to earlier repulsive takes on the Quatermain character isn’t obvious at all considering James Earl Jones’ role as a tribal warrior. Chamberlain escapes mockery, but not by much – after all, he’s stuck with the same terrible dialogue as everyone else, and has to react to the same unconvincing papier-maché threats. Indifferently conceived and ineptly executed, Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold is perhaps best watched as a convincing argument about the skill required to make a decent adventure film: pulp-fiction tropes aren’t nearly enough to satisfy.

  • The Ambulance (1990)

    The Ambulance (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2021) One of my emerging cinephile rules is simple: If I see Larry Cohen in the credits, I watch the movie. He was a clever writer-director, and so there’s nearly always something interesting in the mix whenever he’s involved. Despite lower budgets, his determination to remix familiar elements into something quirky and compelling carries through—as does his obvious affection for New York City. While The Ambulance may look like a typical horror film, it plays with slightly more wit and originality than the norm. Eric Roberts (in his regrettable mullet phase) plays a young comic book illustrator who, smitten with a cute young woman working nearby, work up the nerve to ask her out… and is dismayed when she faints and is carried away in an ambulance driven by sinister characters. His day gets worse when he can’t find her at the hospital she was supposed to go, and his attempts to warn the authorities about this mysterious ambulance are greeted with shrugs and derision. James Earl Jones shows up as a skeptical policeman, but the biggest casting surprise goes to comics legend Stan Lee making his first movie appearance playing himself as the protagonist’s boss. The rest is a chase conspiracy thriller with many paranoid moments and refreshing side characters, including a crusty veteran journalist played by Red Buttons and an attractive policewoman played by Megan Gallagher. The film keeps our interest by being clever, sidestepping some clichés of the genre while reinforcing others, and keeping its biggest irony at the very end. (But you won’t feel too bad for the protagonist, as women throw themselves at him throughout the entire film.)  The Ambulance is not what I’d call a great movie, but it falls straight into that more interesting subgenre of solid B-grade films, wittily imagined and decently executed. It fits with the rest of Cohen’s filmography and it has a few surprises in store, even for jaded viewers.

  • Coming to America (1988)

    Coming to America (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2017) There’s an arc to Eddie Murphy’s career, which started in edgy adult comedy in the early eighties and now seems to be mired in cheap comedy for kids. In that arc, Coming to America seems to be in the sweet spot: accessible to the entire family, but still generally clever and controlled. You can see the seeds of latter bad-Murphy (such as playing two separate characters, or the accents, or the straightforward plotting) but everything seems under control most of the time. It helps that the supporting cast (Arsenio Hall, but also James Earl Jones) is on their game, and that the film doesn’t lose sight of its main goal. It adds up to a competent comedy, and one that hasn’t aged all that much since its release. The love story is standard, but the fish-out-of-water details of two royalty members choosing to look for love in lower-class Queens are amusing. Samuel L. Jackson makes an early appearance as a would-be robber.