And now for our main festive feature, let’s take a look at a film that has become a modern Christmas classic of sorts—albeit with less sentimentality and more a biting look at the shenanigans of shameless old rich folk. With young Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd at their peaks, with solid stars like Jamie Lee Curtis backing them up, here’s my take on Trading Places.
Often times a US Christmas film would be set in either New York City or a nondescript suburbia—this one tries something different by taking us to Philadelphia, a city that even now is markedly divided between the haves and have-nots. Aykroyd here is a young up and coming director at a commodities firm, and despite being Canadian, he’s so artfully able to slip into the role of someone utterly marinated in the Harvard-Yale-Whereverington-upper crust of WASPishness. Unfortunately, his stuffy but otherwise more or less dedicated character becomes a target of his decrepit bosses (so memorably played by Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche) who engineer his downfall into ending up in the city slums, while at the same time elevating a homeless man played by Murphy into his place, as part of some twisted game between them.
Naturally, it’s inconceivable that crusty rich guys could do something so destructive and petty over absolutely nothing. Inconceivable.
Anyhoo, Murphy here is on top as well—believe it or not, kids, there was a time when he was one of the most effortlessly cool new bloods to Hollywood, and here he at first comes of so well as someone who doesn’t buy the shit he’s being sold at first for a second, even if he slips into it in time. Jamie Lee Curtis is also great—for the time, it’s actually a pretty positive portrayal of a self-employed streetwalker who’s making the most of what she has to get back on top, as she ends up taking Aykroyd’s flustered rich boy under her wing for a little time.
After all, what’s more Christmas than getting together and forging new bonds, even if through the weirdest sort of adversity? When our main characters finally get together, it’s that time to embrace the season of giving…even it’s giving each other some cash at the expense of those who have more of it than they know what to do with.
If there’s any criticism to make, it’s that after that point, the film starts to embrace a weird tone after being at least generally grounded in some kind of reality—especially when we start involving random gorillas to take care of bad guys. There’s also that one infamous scene involving everyone dressing up as various stereotypes, and…yeah, even for the eighties, this was a little bit strange. Considering the sort of makeup they give Dan, it’s down to you if this is proves a bit too much or not.
But other than that bizarreness, what we do end up with is that feel good of people coming to stick it to Scrooges who never learned any lesson. It’s that balance of satirical reality and triumph that still makes the film—mostly—enjoyable; indeed, it’s true enough to reality that even the actual US Congress used it in reference to the unfortunately prescient sort of insider trading scams it presents.
So that’s the lesson to be learned here—be nice to each other, don’t try and ruin people’s lives for a dollar, and stay away from inexplicably trainbound apes. Happy holidays, all.
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