So look, this movie didn’t need to exist. Coming to America was a lowkey classic, but nobody was crying out for a sequel. But it’s 2021, and the content miners have reached a rich vein of twencen IP — I mean, Peacock has a new Punky Brewster show starring Soleil Moon Frye — and so of course there was going to be a sequel. And if you take that as a given, this is better than we might have expected.

Because the thing about the original is, more than anything else, it was sweet and joyful, and so is this. Some of that is in solid performances from the new characters (including Tracy Morgan, Wesley Snipes, and Leslie Jones, and a bunch of yutes I don’t know from other things), some of that is in seeing the old cast getting the gang back together again with reprises of all the characters you loved from the original. The net effect is that you get a ton of nostalgia hits while also watching a movie that isn’t just a cheeseball retro piece, and has recognizably modern characters in it.

Wisely, the plot is not a reprise of the original: Despite the name, it takes place more in Zamunda than New York. If anything, it’s reversing the original story, with an American fish out of water in Zamunda; but it’s too invested in continuing the story of the old characters to really commit to that, either, so it ends up kinda just cramming together a whole bunch of character arcs that are crowding each other out a little bit, but also kinda who cares, it’s not like you need that much screen time to hit these story beats. And anyway, you need to leave time for the musical numbers, because what, are you going to not have En Vogue and Salt-N-Pepa play a royal ceremony?

This isn’t a great movie. It will win zero awards. But it’s a genial two hours that I came out of with a smile on my face, and that’s doing pretty good for a comedy. Recommended.