Next month marks the 30th anniversary of the release of what is, in my opinion, one of the funniest films of all time: Trading Places.
Starring comedic demigods Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd, together with Jamie Lee Curtis and Denholm Elliot, this 1983 critical and commercial success is an amusing and trenchant satire on race, class, money and the whole American dream. When a destitute street hustler Billy Ray Valentine (Murphy) unknowingly swaps places with pampered, prissy Wall Street commodities broker Louis Winthorpe III (Ackroyd) and takes over his privileged life as part of a one-dollar bet — a nurture versus nature scientific experiment conducted by the fabulously wealthy yet morally repugnant Duke brothers for whom Winthorpe works — the results are both hilarious and deeply moving.
Directed by John Landis and set in Philadelphia and New York over the Christmas and New Year period, the film has a very specific race- and class-based plot, but at the same time its humour is universal and relevant to all.
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