Trading Places (1983)

Directed by

John Landis

Genre

comedy film, Christmas film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 56m

Rated

R

Rating

7.2 of 10 from 3,695 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

An upper-class commodities broker and a poor street hustler find their lives swapped after two wealthy brothers place a bet on whether a person's success is due to money and breeding or character and intelligence. The two men discover the scheme and team up for a satisfying revenge on those who manipulated them.

comedicfast-pacedsharply satiricalwittycleverwarm-heartedfestivefeel-good

What happens

Trading Places is a 1983 American comedy film directed by John Landis and written by Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod. Starring Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Ralph Bellamy, Don Ameche, Denholm Elliott, and Jamie Lee Curtis, the film tells the story of an upper-class commodities broker (Aykroyd) and a poor street hustler (Murphy) whose lives intersect over the Christmas and New Year holidays when they are unwittingly made the subjects of an elaborate bet to test how each man will perform when their life circumstances are swapped. Harris conceived the outline for Trading Places in the early 1980s after meeting two wealthy brothers who were engaged in an ongoing rivalry with each other. He and his writing partner Weingrod developed the idea as a project to star Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. When they were unable to participate, Landis cast Aykroyd—with whom he had worked previously—and a young but increasingly popular Murphy in his second feature-film role. Landis also cast Curtis against the intent of the studio, Paramount Pictures; she was famous mainly for her roles in horror films, which were looked down upon at the time. Principal photography took place from December 1982 to March 1983, entirely on location in Philadelphia and New York City. Elmer Bernstein scored the film, using Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera buffa The Marriage of Figaro as an underlying theme. Trading Places was considered a box-office success on its release, earning over $90.4 million to become the fourth-highest-grossing film of 1983 in the United States and Canada, and $120.6 million worldwide. It received generally positive reviews, with critics praising the central cast and the film's revival of the 1930s and 1940s screwball comedy genre, though they criticized Trading Places for lacking the genre's moral message and instead promoting the accumulation of wealth. It received multiple award nominations including an Academy Award for Bernstein's score and won two BAFTA awards for Elliott and Curtis. The film also launched or revitalized the careers of its main cast, who each appeared in several other films throughout the 1980s. In particular, Murphy became one of the highest-paid and most sought after comedians in Hollywood. In the years since its release, the film has been praised as one of the greatest comedy films and Christmas films ever made, though it has also drawn criticism for its use of racial jokes and language. In 1988, Bellamy and Ameche reprised their characters for Murphy's comedy film Coming to America. In 2010, the film was referenced in U.S. Congressional testimony concerning the reform of the commodities trading market to prevent the insider trading demonstrated in Trading Places. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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