Talk about "Trading Places" here:
Review by: Breanne Derby
Plot Summary
"Trading Places" is something of a "the prince and the pauper" type story. It depicts the lives of Louis Winthorpe III, a wealthy stock-broker with a beautiful fiancée, a good job, and a nice apartment (played by Dan Aykroyd), and Billy Ray Valentine, a poor, homeless, man who spends his days pretending to be a disabled veteran in a feeble attempt to con pocket change out of the people who pass him by on a daily basis (played by Eddie Murphy). These two have their lives exchanged by Louis's wealthy bosses, Randolph and Mortimer Duke. Randolph and Mortimer make a bet that Billy Ray can do just as good of a job as Louis predicting when to buy and when to sell stocks, and that Louis, when put in the wrong environment, will turn to a life of violence and crime.
Review
This film was quite unlike anything I've ever seen before. I would say that without a doubt it's the best rendition of a "prince-and-the-pauper"-type story that I've ever seen. I really enjoyed the humor, and this opens up the door to a whole new collection of old-movies that I've never seen before.
I really enjoyed the storyline, and the idea of the incredibly wealthy exploiting others for their own personal amusement is one that I find particularly humorous, and at the same time, particularly evil. This film embraced many common stereotypes of
America, and really of the world, while at the same time going over-the-top with them and taking advantage of the way people view one another to create an almost satirical and certainly mocking piece.
The acting, of course, was brilliant. I loved the people they cast, and I thought that every actor and actress played his or her part to a T, except for maybe Kristin Holby, who played Penelope, Louis's fiancée. She seemed a bit rigid throughout the scenes that she was in, and it was as if she was only walking through her part, but that type of acting worked with her character, whom the audience isn't really supposed to take a particular fondness to, so regardless of whether or not Penelope was actually supposed to be cold and unfeeling, she was.
I wish I would have known more about the way the stock-market works, because if I had, I may have understood some more of this film. A lot of the work that Billy Ray and Louis, and even the Dukes, were doing throughout the film, I didn't really understand, because I don't really know much about the stock-market other than what they teach you in high-school Economics. Perhaps if I were a broker, or at least had an idea of what brokers do, I would have found the movie either A. even more funny than it already was (and it was pretty darn funny) or B. incredibly insulting to my profession. At any rate, I'm glad I saw it, and it was still funny and understandable with my limited knowledge of the stock market.
Conclusion
This was definitely a worth-watching film. I was very entertained by the antics of Louis and Billy Ray, and by the extremities to which both of them polarized. I'm glad I watched this film, and I would definitely recommend it to a friend in search of a good, old movie. It was interesting to see Eddie Murphy in his pre-"Nutty Professor" days, because before this, I never had. After having finished that, I feel as though there are a lot of potentially excellent movies I've never seen because I'm so young. All these actors who I always thought of as being kind-of old, had careers when they were younger, and it's baffling to me. My advice is that if you haven't seen this film, you should, because I really enjoyed it, and I didn't know what I'd been missing out on.
