Candy Cane Lane

It’s that time of year again. Christmas is upon us, and the holiday movies are rolling out. “Candy Cane Lane” is a 2023 Prime original Christmas/family movie starring Eddie Murphy (Bowfinger), Tracee Ellis Ross (Black-ish), Jillian Bell (Workaholics), Genneya Walton (Project Mc2), Thaddeus J. Mixson (Reasonable Doubt), and Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation).

A man (Murphy) who has recently been laid off right before Christmas desperately needs to win his neighborhood Christmas light contest, winning house gets a hundred thousand dollars. He unknowingly makes a deal with a mischievous elf, when buying Christmas decorations for the contest. Chaos ensues as his 12 days of Christmas decorations come to life. He now only has a certain amount of time to reverse it before it’s too late.

Eddie Murphy is hilarious, my favorite comic of all time. So, if an Eddie Murphy movie comes out, I’m going to see it. It’s cute, it’s heartfelt, and like all Christmas movies, they find the true meaning of Christmas. That’s why we watch Christmas movies, right? For the warm fuzzy feeling this time of year. It achieves that, but I think it’s lacking in the comedy department. Especially with Eddie Murphy, it’s just not very funny. It’s a good family Christmas movie, but it won’t be a holiday classic anytime soon. I give it a 6.5/10.

You People

“You People” is a Netflix original 2023 comedy/drama starring Eddie Murphy (Meet Dave), Jonah Hill (Superbad), Lauren London (ATL), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Seinfeld), David Duchovny (The X-Files) Mike Epps (Friday After Next), and Rhea Perlman (Cheers).

A young white Jewish man and young African American Muslim woman fall in love and get engaged. Being different skin colors and from different worlds may prove to be too big of a hurdle to overcome with tension from their families mounting.

Eddie Murphy is the GOAT of comedy to me, and I also like Jonah Hill. They bring in the star power also adding Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Mike Epps. So, it looks like a no brainer, that it’s a must see. It’s currently sitting at number one in movies on Netflix. So, how is it? They missed the mark somewhere. It’s two hours of focusing on race. Which is an important issue, but they tried to also make a comedy out of it and ended up falling flat. Either make it a drama, or a comedy with the star power you have. Instead, its a two hour bore, with a couple of good jokes here and there. Overall though, you just want it to end. It’s a shame because I really wanted to like this one, but I give it a 5/10.

Coming 2 America

‘Coming 2 America’ is the long awaited sequel to ‘Coming to America’, which is a little out of the blue considering the first one came out in 1988, over 30 years ago. However, Eddie Murphy is the king of comedy. ‘Bowfinger’, and ‘Meet Dave’, are two of the funniest movies ever made, so anything with Eddie Murphy I’m going to watch. ‘Coming 2 America’ has a blockbuster cast starring Eddie Murphy (Bowfinger), Arsenio Hall (Coming to America), Jermaine Fowler (Crashing), Leslie Jones (Ghostbusters), Tracy Morgan (30 Rock), Wesley Snipes (White Men Can’t Jump), and James Earl Jones (The Lion King).

Prince Akeem (Murphy), now King Akeem, travels back to America once again, this time to find his illegitimate son so he will have a male heir to the throne.

I’m not sure how anticipated this movie was, like I said earlier it was out of the blue, over 30 years later, I’m not sure if anyone was expecting it. But here it is, and the first one is such a cult classic, and with this firepower of comics it has to be good right? Unfortunately, that is not the case. This one drags, it has the potential to be great, but it just isn’t. Fowler plays Murphy’s part from the first one. He plays Murphy’s son and is brought back to Africa, and he’s the young naïve one like Murphy is in the first one, but he’s no where near as funny as Murphy is, not even in the same category. So that leaves Murphy, he plays a staunchly king in this one, which has no comic relief, so that takes out classic Eddie Murphy, that is typically hilarious. Which leaves Leslie Jones, and Tracy Morgan, and surprisingly they bring nothing to the table here. To say the least this one is underwhelming and a disappointment. They even make a joke in it about not needing sequels that is messes up the first one. They should have listened to their own joke. As much as it pains me to give an Eddie Murphy film a low score, I have to give it a 5/10. If you are interested, you can check it out on Amazon Prime.