Trading Places
1983
John Landis
I guess I think about it like a graph with two axes. The x-axis is funniness and the y-axis is "meaning something," and there's a line of the top left to the bottom right that acts as a boundary, and all comedy movies above the line are good movies. Hopefully you can picture it in your mind. Like imagine The Naked Gun being all the way on the right side of the graph (because it's funny) but low on the y-axis and only just barely above the line (because it doesn't really have a "point"). But it's still above the line. And then think about something like You've Got Mail, which is above the line because it's decently high on the y-axis (it has something to say, in my opinion), but is only mildly funny in a cute rom-com sort of way, and thus doesn't make it that far along the x-axis. But it's still above the line.
Trading Spaces is above the line because I liked thinking about the premise and I think it had something surprisingly important to say about capitalism, class warfare, race relations, and the city I have made my home in, and it's above the line despite the fact that I thought it was only kind of funny (with exactly one scene that had my dying laughing). It was a good movie, even though it wasn't the funniest comedy, is what I'm trying to say.
Trading Spaces is above the line because I liked thinking about the premise and I think it had something surprisingly important to say about capitalism, class warfare, race relations, and the city I have made my home in, and it's above the line despite the fact that I thought it was only kind of funny (with exactly one scene that had my dying laughing). It was a good movie, even though it wasn't the funniest comedy, is what I'm trying to say.
It's pretty easy to say that the themes of Trading Places are "relevant" today, so let's start there. You think Randolph and Mortimer are villains in isolation? Hell no. They are the perfect representation of the ruling class as it stands today, here in 2025. There are people like Randolph and Mortimer in the highest seats of the nation, both in the public eye and in the shadows behind the scenes. And they are destroying our planet, absolutely ripping our country to fucking shreds. You think destroying one man's life over a dollar is bad? Think about the billionaires who made their money through the direct and indirect killing of millions of people. Our earth is going to burn to a crisp in our lifetimes because of people like Jeff Bezos. If anything, Trading Places didn't go far enough in taking the Dukes' fortunes. They should be fucking dead. (And certainly not redeemed in Coming to America, which I missed because of the order in which I saw these two movies.)
Class and race being intertwined, as they sometimes are in America, we can put under the same umbrella that the Dukes are evil because of their fortune and that they are evil because they are hardcore racists. The scene in the bathroom when they call Eddie Murphy's character the n-word was legitimately shocking, in my opinion. Mostly because I'm watching in 2025 and films these days aren't usually as blunt about a character's racist motivations anymore, at least not in comedies. There is apparently a documentary called The N-Word that specifically speaks to the use of the word in Trading Places, and defends its use, because this pretty accurate in terms of how old white rich men would speak in the 1980s, and that it benefits no one to censor it or pretend that it didn't happen. I can attest to this—I would've already known these characters were villainous just based on their actions, but their racist words really underlined it for me, a white man.
Class and race being intertwined, as they sometimes are in America, we can put under the same umbrella that the Dukes are evil because of their fortune and that they are evil because they are hardcore racists. The scene in the bathroom when they call Eddie Murphy's character the n-word was legitimately shocking, in my opinion. Mostly because I'm watching in 2025 and films these days aren't usually as blunt about a character's racist motivations anymore, at least not in comedies. There is apparently a documentary called The N-Word that specifically speaks to the use of the word in Trading Places, and defends its use, because this pretty accurate in terms of how old white rich men would speak in the 1980s, and that it benefits no one to censor it or pretend that it didn't happen. I can attest to this—I would've already known these characters were villainous just based on their actions, but their racist words really underlined it for me, a white man.
What's interesting, and definitely uncomfortable, is that there's a "joke" later on in the movie that does the opposite, and is actually racist with no defense for its use. Akroyd's character wears blackface for absolutely no reason. Actually, okay, let's talk about potential reasons. In the final quarter of the film, it suddenly switches to a train heist, and my reading on that decision is that this is Trading Places being as ridiculous as possible, on purpose. Like, it's funny that none of the elaborate setup, with the introduction of five new characters plus a gorilla, the setting on a train during a New Year's party, the costumes and bad-on-purpose accents, the time devoted to the setup and tear-down of all of it, that's all part of the joke. It's actually really funny, in my opinion. I love movies when they are self-aware like this and do some ridiculous shit that would be straight-up bad filmmaking were it not for the self-awareness.
Okay, but... it still involves blackface. I think this ties into the idea of "stupid for stupid's sake," like in a It's Always Sunny way, where the joke is on the characters who are idiots and are so idiotic that they think blackface is a good idea even though everyone else knows that it's not a good idea at all, in-film characters and out-of-film audience alike. Maybe. But I still don't think Trading Places does enough to make that clear, and so at the end of the day, you're just wondering whether Dan Akroyd and John Landis thought blackface itself was funny. And it's not, hence the discomfort. You can see the clear difference between the n-word and the blackface, though, right? How one adds to the understanding of the film and one detracts from it?
I didn't know about any of this before I watched the film, by the way. I wasn't sharpening my knives at the thought of cutting down racism with the power of the blog(!!!!!). I really only knew about Trading Places because it's set in Philly, and very clearly so. I feel like I periodically see threads on the Philly subreddit about movies set in Philadelphia (besides Rocky, it's always specified), and Trading Places always gets mentioned. I'm not keeping track of Philly movies on the Never Seen It list, but it's at least worth mentioning the subject in comparison to the last Philly movie we watched—The Watermelon Woman.
I actually find it pretty interesting to consider these two movies to be two sides to the same coin. The Watermelon Woman featured passages about "the beauty of urban decay," and in that way I felt seen, because that is a beauty that I've long appreciated about this great city, how there's a spirit within the so-called decay that has always seemed appealing to me, in that the people who live here, among the decay, are so goddamn motivated to build it up and improve. That makes my neighbors good people, and that makes me proud of Philadelphia. And then here's Trading Places, which I think very purposefully shows the opposite of that. The long introductory montage of our city shows many of the historical sites and tourist traps and fancy hotels. There's superficial beauty but it's all fake, and it repels. That's the point, of course. It should repel you to see the creature comforts of the ultra-rich, because their comforts are at your expense. Their lifestyles are destroying your city, our city, the city of Philadelphia.
And so I appreciated the fact that Trading Places was set in Philadelphia for this reason. It was pro-Philadelphia in how it depicted some of the soulless aspects of Philadelphia, and showed them to be bad. I guess this is similar to the way the film was anti-racist in the way that it depicted some incredibly racist behavior. Like we said during American Beauty—what's the center of this film? I think the center can be found in the way that the poor and middle class are able to come together to topple the rich.
I also think its center is on that SEPTA bus in the rain, when Akroyd's Louis Winthorpe, all drunk and dressed in a dirty Santa costume, starts crying and pulls an entire salmon out of his red Santa suit and starts eating it right there in front of the other horrified bus riders. I have never felt more seen as a regular SEPTA rider. I'm thinking back to the beginning of Film Club in April, and I'm struggling to think of movie moment that I laughed at more or harder than I laughed at this scene.
But I guess my whole point is that comedies can be more than just laughs. They can mean something. And a comedy doesn't have to be the funniest thing in the world if it means something. Even if there is one moment in it that really is the funniest thing in the fucking world.
But I guess my whole point is that comedies can be more than just laughs. They can mean something. And a comedy doesn't have to be the funniest thing in the world if it means something. Even if there is one moment in it that really is the funniest thing in the fucking world.
GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5
NEXT TIME: There was a Zoom last night for A Nightmare on Elm Street, hope y'all made it. If not, a discussion board tomorrow to chat about it some more.
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