Leave it to Sylvester Stallone to turn the restoration of a 1965 Mustang into a workout montage. By the time he made “Lock Up” in 1989, he’d already done four Rockys and three Rambos, and yet his idea of branching out was to play a short-timer convict who gets beat up a lot. Donald Sutherland plays a sadistic warden (is there any other kind in Hollywood?) trying to keep Sly inside. John Amos, Frank McRae and Tom Sizemore provide strong support, but the story is an unimaginative mashup of Stallone’s previous work with some of “The Longest Yard” thrown in.
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“Coming to America” (1988) might be Eddie Murphy’s most underrated movie. The story is basic romantic comedy boilerplate (Spoiler: He pretends he’s something he’s not to impress girl, she becomes interested, he tells truth, she gets pissed, hijinks ensue, kiss and make up, the end.). The differentiators in rom-coms are the stars and their characters. You have to like the first and believe the second. Murphy and Arsenio Hall (an African prince and his servant) were at the height of their likability and they create memorable characters. Accents, mannerisms and naivete. The forgettable female lead just had to show up.
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