Trading Places - 25th September 2012

This weeks' Tueday Night is Film Night film, goes back to 1983. As Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd star in;

Trading Places

Straight into the plot this week, to give you an outline of the story, if you don't know already.

Randolph and Mortimer Duke (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche respectively) are super rich commodity brokers, making their money on the stock exchange. When a chance encounter with down and out con-man; Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) plants the idea of a bet in their heads. Could financial success be down to breeding or environment.
So they decide to fabricate a role swap, taking one of their very successful employee's, one Louis Winthorpe III played perfectly by Dan Ackroyd and force him out and replace him with Valentine. Therefore creating a cruel experiment in social Darwinism.

The tag line for the movie states; "Take two complete strangers, make one of them rich the other poor... just watch the fun while they're... Trading Places".

It's a very interesting concept, but the "fun" was rather thinly veiled and the laughs not high in ratio, but it is a classic movie, although showing it's age, as it is 29 years old this year.
For Eddie Murphy, it definitely helped to establish him as a comic actor, following up as it did on his debut film; "48 Hours" from 1982.

Ackroyd is perfectly cast as the pompous Winthorpe and Denholm Elliott does a sterling job as Coleman the butler.

However, the highlight of the film, for the male contingent at least, must be the gorgeously young (25 years old) Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays Ophelia, a local hooker who assists in the defrauding of Winthorpe, only to take pity on him and help him back on his feet. In the process of this, she is required to remove her top at least twice. Which was nice.

So although the film is now dated, it is a classic. The amount of swearing is high for an '80's movie, but don't let that put you off. The laughs aren't that regular, but the class of acting, the delivery and the story stand this film in good stead and is a must see movie, if only once. (And if only for the gratuitous visual splendour that is the chest of Miss Curtis).