Saturday, July 13, 2013

Trading Places 1983

In Trading Places Don Amechi is Mortimer Duke and Ralph Bellamy is Randolph Duke. Together they are totally gnarly super rich investors who play games with the human  tragedy. They bet that a super rich associate couldn’t make it as a poor man and that a poor man doesn’t have what it takes to be a rich man.

Louis Winthorpe III, Dan Aykroyd (Blues Brothers, Ghost Busters, Dr. Detroit) is an up and coming yuppie investor with a beautiful girlfriend and ultra yuppie frat boy friends. His world is perfect until a well orchestrated game is played by the Duke brothers. Down on his luck and out of money, he sees his world fall apart.

Billy Ray Valentine, Eddie Murphy (Beverly Hills Cop, Coming to America, The Golden Child) is a down on his luck super schemer whose world suddenly changes when the Duke brothers replace Winthorpe with him.  Suddenly rich and full of investment opportunities, Valentine begins the investment game.

A series of events brings the dejected Winthorpe and the newly minted investor Valentine together. Both smelling the Duke’s rotten scheme, they come up with a plan to set things right.  They are helped along the way by a prostitute with a good head for investing, played by teens scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween franchise), and the butler.

Will Winthorpe get his job back? Will the prostitute get off the streets? Will Valentine have to go back to the streets? Find out these answers and more in Trading Places.