Trading Places (1983)
Directed by John Landis
A snobbish investor and a wily street con-artist find their positions reversed as part of a bet by two callous millionaires.
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What critics compared Trading Places to
It doesn't help that several early scenes are lifted straight from "Trading Places," the Dan Ackroyd-Eddie Murphy classic.
Anal rape jokes and racial stereotypes dominate this third-rate comedy, which can't help but recall Trading Places (1983) with its class-war story pairing a hot black comic and a past-his-prime white one.
There are faint echoes in Get Hard of Dan Akroyd and Eddie Murphy in Trading Places, although that was a much smarter and funnier film than this one.
Classic comedies - including the Philadelphia-set Trading Places - have expertly worked these ideas into the fabric of their concepts.
This latest role is particularly Aykroydesque in that it explicitly recalls Louis Winthorpe III, from John Landis's classic 1983 prince-and-pauper comedy Trading Places.
Best of all, he somehow manages to get a ferocious, energetic performance from Eddie Murphy, who is at his fast-talking best, recalling his star-making turns in 48 Hrs. and Trading Places .
That performer, of course, is Eddie Murphy who segued from "Saturday Night Live" cast member to Hollywood superstar with "Beverly Hills Cop," "Trading Places" and "48 Hours."
He's been portraying the sharp-tongued hustler since "48 Hours" and "Trading Places" in the early 1980s.
Beginning with “48 Hours” and then following up with such popular films as “Trading Places,” “Beverly Hills Cop” and “Coming to America,” Murphy was the standard that all other comedians were compared to.
Murphy essentially plays a 25-years-older version of his character from Trading Places, another comedy about revenge against evil rich villains which had a much more witty and creative third act than does Tower Heist.
A sequence where he tasks the amateurs each to steal $50 worth of merchandise at a mall is particularly funny, but really, it's just a pleasure to see the Eddie Murphy of Trading Places and Beverly Hills Cop again.
"Have you seen Trading Places, Nikita, Pretty Woman?" Colin Firth's Harry Hart (code name: Galahad) asks our hero Eggsy (Taron Egerton), a council estate kid with a chip on his shoulder.
Comparisons to Liza Doolittle and “Trading Places” are referenced early enough in the movie to let us know that Vaughn isn’t afraid of exposing how self-aware the movie will be.
Just as Galahad knocks out the teeth of his enemies, the script makes on-the-nose reference to James Bond and, of all things, 1980s Eddie Murphy comedy "Trading Places."
In one of the film’s scattered semi-funny riffs, Harry asks Eggsy whether he knows Trading Places , La Femme Nikita , or Pretty Woman.
In a particularly amusing scene, Harry tries to prepare Eggsy for the transformation he’s about to embark on, citing more modern rags-to-riches grooming films like Trading Places and La Femme Nikita, none of which the young man has seen.
And the films Mister obsessively watches and re-watches to help him prepare for his future career as an actor, like Fargo and Trading Places , similarly feel newly exotic and strange when seen from the perspective of a young man who knows all the words and rhythms and cadences, even if the films seem to come from a much different, more ridiculous, and altogether more benevolent universe than his own.
Mister has made a study of actors in his short life, becoming a master at turning himself into Will Smith, or more tellingly, Eddie Murphy in “Trading Places.”
Mister, determined to be an actor, steals the show practicing audition dialogue from “Fargo” and, more pointedly, “Trading Places.”
Brooks, whose character memorizes lines from “Trading Places” and “Fargo,” has more to play and is a far better actor than young Mr. Dizon, and that imbalance works against the film.
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A 30-years-younger Eddie Murphy -- circa "Trading Places" -- might work, but unless Hollywood has a functioning Wayback Machine, I don't see him taking the part.
From “It Happened One Night” to “Trading Places,” it’s yet another entry in the category of “rich people need ordinary folks to show them how to live it up.”
The two generate such fun and good will in this Gallic " Driving Miss Daisy " (or " Trading Places ," " Scent of a Woman ," ad nauseam) that you can almost forgive the film's breezy racial stereotyping, cheap comedy and phony-baloney attitudes toward art, culture, class, and quadriplegia.
The premise of the French film "The Intouchables" is like a mash-up of " The King's Speech " and " Driving Miss Daisy ," with a dose of "Trading Places" for good measure.
The storyline follows the formula where opposites forge a friendship, here between a loaded white aristocrat and a Senegalese immigrant from the projects with a prison record—it’s a status quo Trading Places.
This diverting and generally affable costarring pretext for Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy, opening today at area theaters, solicits comparisons in its press material to such Preston Sturges' comedies as "Easy Living" and "Christmas in July."
Screenwriter Michael J. Wilson ("Ice Age") trots out unfunny film references ("Jerry Maguire") and rehashed plot lines ("Trading Places," "Nemo") with deadening results.
This diverting and generally affable costarring pretext for Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy, opening today at area theaters, solicits comparisons in its press material to such Preston Sturges' comedies as "Easy Living" and "Christmas in July."
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The movie is based on a true story — and lifted from the 2011 French film “Les Intouchables” — but no one really worked on the shaky racial angle for an American audience, one that has seen elements of this in movies such as “Driving Miss Daisy” or “Trading Places” (that last one also has a pottery smashing scene).
If you want to see a film about the unlikely friendship between a wealthy white guy and a streetwise black guy that was filmed in those two same cities, ignore this and watch Trading Places on cable again.
We need Eddie Murphy, in “Trading Places,” looking up at us, just the once, when a rich condescender explains what a B.L.T. is; the look means, “Spare me this old white fool.”