NEW YORK -- If your idea of humor is seeing a fat man's pants split in back when he bends over, then you will find 'Coming to America' screamingly funny.
This is not 'Coming to America,' the film starring Eddie Murphy. This is the failed pilot of a TV spinoff from the movie and it will air on CBS as the first half of the 'CBS Summer Playhouse' on Tuesday, July 4, 8-8:30 p.m. Eastern time.
While this version stars Tommy Davidson as Prince Tariq, the spoiled rotten younger brother of King Akeem of Zamunda, it doesn't let Murphy off the hook. The show was produced by Eddie Murphy Televsion Enterprises in association with Paramount. Further, Murphy is listed as co-executive producer.
The premise is the always-promising clash of cultures, the innocent abroad, as exemplified on television these days by ABC's 'Perfect Strangers.'
But 'Coming to America' is just perfectly awful.
Tariq has sent to Queens, New York, to finish his schooling and to grow up.
The precipitating incident was when he piped Madonna's 'Like A Virgin' into papal audience. The dignitaries were not amused. Tariq was just trying to liven things up and says he should have been grounded, not exiled.
'The king is full of Cocoa Puffs,' is Tariq's witty summation.
Tariq and his faithful fat companion Omar (Paul Bates) wind up living in the middle class home of the Mackey family. There's father Carl (John Hancock), mother Pauline (Hattie Winston) and pretty teenage Phyllis (Paris Vaughan).
The young prince is the happy-go-lucky sort who doesn't get ulcers - he gives them -- possibly to Hancock who already is drooling at the pizza he isn't allowed to eat because of overweight.
No, it's not his pants that rip -- it's Omar's.
The prince has spent a month's allowance in nine days and thinks the idea of living on a budget is quaint.
'Why have I been chosen to suffer the affliction of not having everything I want?' he complains.
He does an imitation of Stevie Wonder with and without sunglasses that may be a new low in tastelessness in a medium that keeps trying.
This royal pain in the neck asks Phyllis to be the 'royal squeeze,' and she declines.
When he learns that the Mackeys control his funds, and Mackey is short of help in his diner, he volunteers the paid services of himself and Omar.
The result is a predictable disaster for the diner, although the prince has a ball.
There are a few 'in' lines where the prince says he could be anything -- even a Beverly Hills cop, and Omar could be a Beverly Hills cop, too. That's about as good as the writing gets.
If the prince in 'Coming to America' wishes he had been grounded instead of exiled to America, so will the audience.
That's two strikes so far for Murphy's production company, which also produced 'What's Alan Watching?', which aired last spring and did not attract enough audience to get on the CBS schedule.
'Alan' at least was an innovative idea that showed promise. 'Coming to America' is going no place.
The second half of the 'CBS Summer Playhouse' is 'Shivers,' starring Lesley-Anne Down as one of three ghosts from colonial America who want to scare away the new residents of their old home.
For a real treat on the Fourth of July, try tuning in PBS at 8 p.m. Eastern time (check local listings) for 'A Capital Fourth 1989,' a live celebration of the national holiday and the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Congress.
A quarter of a million partiers are expected to picnic and party on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol as E.G. Marshall hosts the affair. It includes the 10th annual concert by the National Symphony Orchestra. Pearl Bailey will ask the audience to join her in 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic' and 'God Bless America.'
As fireworks explode over the nation's capital, the National Symphony will strike up a medley of Sousa marches, leading up to a solo of 'The Stars and Stripes Forever.'
