I’m no professional critic, but as the Average Man’s Television Review [patent pending] will tell you, I am a college educated male between the ages of 18 and 49, so I’m kind of a big deal.

And I’d like to open this blog with a question: Haven’t we had enough of unprecedented times?

I bring this up because I recently screened Coming 2 America.

“It’ll be nice to get thrown back into the story of Zamunda,” I thought to myself, actively trying to avoid something new. Loyal Scaiaholics will recall one of my hobbies is trying to keep things the same.

My concern is we may be overthinking this film. Rotten Tomatoes reports most of us didn’t care for it.

“Oh, a lazy reliance on callbacks and a story that rehashes the first film make this sequel a letdown!” one person wrote. It’s possible I added the “Oh” and will continue that.

“Oh, I found the storyline a tad contrived. It was a bit of a stretch to make a movie about something which didn’t actually take place in the first film,” another wrote.

Some of the more substantial complaints involved Hollywood maybe not reading the room about where we are with race relations and stereotypes. I understand that, but I’m not entirely sure what ground-breaking material we were expecting from a sequel from a film that included bon mot about Dr. Martin Luther the King and whether Rocky Marciano was as a strong a boxer as Joe Louis. Or a film that featured bathers in an early scene.

This blog celebrates absurdity. Not every film has to feel ways about things.

We learned from the original Coming to America Duke and Duke were ruined by Denholm Elliot and, to a lesser degree, Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd. It’s nice to know their family was able to get back on top.

It was also nice to hear King Jaffe Joffer speak the promo, “This is ZNN.”

I can understand, after the year we’ve had, people wouldn’t want existing stereotypes reinforced, but a movie like this can cast a light on the absurdity of those stereotypes. Coming 2 America may not have hit the mark as strongly as Blazing Saddles, but Mel Brooks makes a strong point: We’ve become too sensitive.

Also, after the year we’ve had, it’s nice to see something familiar, where you don’t have to do a bunch of thinkin’.

Speaking of not thinking, sometimes when I’m waiting for a press conference to start, I try to look busy. I frown at my phone while it looks like I’m resolutely penning notes in there. In actuality, I’m frustrated with a game where you connect dots of the same color.

To get an extra life [sometimes you simply can’t get the dots to connect quickly enough], you can watch an ad. Look at this gal here:

She was tasked with figuring out new ways to illustrate how good things smell. We should respect that. She had to figure out a way to look excited differently while not taking the attention off the product.

“Okay, let’s try something wild,” the director may have told her. “Let’s have you turning your head to smell the shirt… Oh, let’s not have you turn all the way around. Only turn it slightly. Remember, we’re here to talk about Downy. Only slightly.”