Another John Landis movie that critics hated, but that the unwashed masses made into a hit. I like it, too (I haven’t washed in two weeks!). Landis is well-schooled in classic comedy and is comfortable with pure piffle. This story of a wealthy African prince who travels to New York City to shirk his arranged marriage, disguise himself as a commoner and seek true love via screwball machinations has all of the ingredients of Depression-era fluff (right down to fantasy views of the lives of the very rich), but with R-rated raunchiness. Films like this tend to lean hard on star power and here Eddie Murphy proves himself one of those rare actors who can do broad comedy and be believable as a romantic lead at the same time. He’s a charisma machine even as he puts on, for the entire movie, a goofy accent meant to emulate royalty from a fictional nation that probably exists in the same universe as the Marx Brothers’ Fredonia. The African iconography here is cartoonish to the max, very 1930s in its broad strokes, though affectionate and funny. When the story moves to the USA, it’s all infectious bustle and hustle, an outsider’s view of the big city. Yes, it’s a film that tries to please everyone and it’s very easy to list every corny and predictable thing about it. Whether or not it makes you laugh depends on how big of a problem you have with that. At the very least, this film deserves credit for helping to kill off the Jheri curl hairstyle.