Trading Places (1983)

Once upon a time, back in the 80s, movie producers could make an R-rated comedy.  At some point, film comedies became a lot more castrated, even the sex romps.  Judd Apatow has made some in-roads towards reclaiming comedies with actual vulgar jokes that are really vulgar, but even he has some limits he can't cross.  I was thinking about this when I caught 1983's Trading Places on HBO last week.

This was a movie featuring two former Saturday Night Live castmembers, though neither were members of the cast at the same time, and the one who got top billing was Dan Aykroyd.  These days, Aykroyd is mostly trying to get a third Ghostbusters made without Bill Murray and taking supporting roles in other comedies.  His last starring role was as the title character in Yogi Bear and then it was only his voice.

The other fellow was a young Eddie Murphy.  Murphy still gets the starring roles, more so than Aykroyd does, but his parts are a lot more family friendly since he donned multiple fat suits for The Nutty Professor.

The basic plot is simple:  two greedy billionaire brothers, the Dukes, make a bet over whether nature or nurture determines whether or not someone will be a criminal or not.  Randolph (played by the late Ralph Bellamy) believes nature does it.  His brother Mortimer (played by the late Don Ameche) doesn't seem to care much, but ruining people's lives seems to be beyond the consideration of either man.  They opt to take a young stockbroker that works for them, Louis Winthrope III (Aykroyd), make him destitute without a home or friends, and bring in a street hustler that was begging on the streets while pretending to be a legless Vietnam vet, Billy Ray Vallentine (Murphy).

The bet is "the usual" (which turns out to be a dollar) and it turns out when a rich guy loses everything and a poor guy gains it, well, they do switch places in every way.  But the tables get turned when Vallentine overhears the brothers settling their bet, learn that both he and Louis won't be coming back to the firm, and further, one of the Dukes drops a certain N-word about Vallentine.  See, that N-word is something that doesn't appear in too many comedies these days either.

There's a team-up then between Louis and Vallentine, along with helpful butler Denholm Elliott and really helpful prostitue Jamie Lee Curtis.  Why they need to dress up and pretend to be foreigners I am not sure, but this does afford us the sight of Aykroyd in blackface pretending to be Jamaican.  That's one last thing you don't see much anywhere these days.

Despite cameos by Frank Oz, James Belushi, future senator Al Franken, and Franken partner Tom Davis, plus a gorilla, I don't really get into this one all that much.  Truth be told, I much prefer Murphy and director John Landis' Coming to America which, as a bonus, gives us a cameo by the Duke brothers getting their fortunes back in the most happenstance of ways.