Trading Places (1983)

Release date: 1983-06-08
Country: USA
Language: English
Director: John Landis
Production Co: Cinema Group Ventures, Paramount Pictures
Genre: Comedy
Rating: 7.5/10
Length: 1h 56min

Storyline

Louis Winthorpe is a businessman who works for commodities brokerage firm of Duke and Duke owned by the brothers Mortimer and Randolph Duke. Now they bicker over the most trivial of matters and what they are bickering about is whether it's a person's environment or heredity that determines how well they will do in life. When Winthorpe bumps into Billy Ray Valentine, a street hustler and assumes he is trying to rob him, he has him arrested. Upon seeing how different the two men are, the brothers decide to make a wager as to what would happen if Winthorpe loses his job, his home and is shunned by everyone he knows and if Valentine was given Winthorpe's job. So they proceed to have Winthorpe arrested and to be placed in a compromising position in front of his girlfriend. So all he has to rely on is the hooker who was hired to ruin him.

Plot Keywords

role reversal, class differences, suicide attempt, stock market, prostitute, blackface, bare breasts, scam, social satire, santa claus suit, loss of job, jail, fiancee, female frontal nudity, rags to riches, fish out of water, pennsylvania, new york city, poverty, cult film

Short Review

Landis' direction is deft, but the sparkling performances are the real draw not only by Murphy and Aykroyd but also by Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy as the meddling oldsters, Denholm Elliott as the gentlemanly servant and Jamie Lee Curtis.