FLASHBACK FRIDAY - Trading Places

Mortimer and Randolph Duke, millionaire brothers who own a commodities brokerage firm have made a life of making bets of random things. Their latest bet involves proving once and for all whether someone is a product of their environment, or if one could adapt to their surroundings. In order to do this, they work behind the scenes to influence the financial downfall of a snobbish broker at their firm named Louis Winthorpe III, and for a bum living on the streets named Billy Ray Valentine to take his place. What ensues is a hilarious affair that also has some pretty interesting messages regarding humanity, economic status, and racial bias.

If Trading Places had been the first Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd movie I'd ever seen, I could probably have predicted that both of these two men would have a great career in store for each of them. Both of them had me rolling with laughter whenever they were onscreen. I didn't read too much about it until I sat down and watched it, but I was surprised at the number of cameos throughout the movie. It was cool to see Frank Oz, the puppeteer responsible for several Muppet characters, Yoda, and Sesame Street characters. It took me several minutes to realize Jim Belushi makes an appearance as a New Year's Eve partier dressed in a monkey suit. Seeing Arleen Sorkin, the voice of Harley Quinn in the animated Justice League cartoon (one of my personal favorites), was unexpected and cool to see as well.

I did find it pretty interesting how Trading Places, while a comedy, had some things to say about economic status and racial bias. The two brothers, within the terms of their bet, believed that Louis - a white man who has never known what it means to be poor - would turn to crime due to his sudden financial windfall and Billy Ray -an African American living on the streets - wouldn't be able to become a respectable citizen when presented with more wealth and status than he ever dreamed of. This type of switching positions story has been done countless times - from Trading Places to Freaky  Friday - but where most times a story like this is simply played for laughs, nothing more, nothing less, Trading Places puts an emphasis on how it doesn't matter what background one comes from, what matters is character. Louis comes to learn that money isn't all it's cracked up to be, and Billy Ray continues to be the same wisecracking good man he was prior to the bet. I thought that was pretty cool.

Now, I must extend caution when watching Trading Places. It IS rated R, and because of this there are a few rather unnecessary scenes of topless women, in the context of simply changing clothes, as well as being drunk in the middle of a party. Hearing one of the Duke brothers drop the 'N' word randomly during a conversation, as well as a couple racist jokes was kind of jarring, yet at the same time not all that unexpected given the context of the story.

Despite that, however, I thought Trading Places was hilarious, and I'm glad I finally took the chance to sit down and watch it.