Ironic comedy about getting rich—and poor

Press, 8 March 1984, Page 18

Ironic comedy about getting rich —and poor

"Seems to me the way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people,” says Eddie' Murphy in ’’Trading Places,” which will start tomorrow at the Savoy.

So begins one of the most elaborate and ingenious of revenge schemes—one which goes so far as to use the world commodity market as its pawn.

This satire on the art of American avarice unites three of today’s youngest and most popular comedic talents: Dan Aykroyd (“The Blues Brothers”), Eddie Murphy (“48 Hours”) and the director, John Landis (“Animal House,” “The Blues Brothers,” “An American Werewolf in London”).

The film also features Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche, who appear together on screen for the first time.

Aykroyd and Murphy play two men whose paths were never meant to cross.

Aykroyd is wealthy, fastidious Louis Winthorpe 111, an executive in one of Philadelphia’s leading investment firms. Murphy plays Billy Ray Valentine, who has spent his life in the ghetto surviving on his wits.

The scheme that throws them together is set in motion by the greedy, conniving Duke brothers (Bellamy and Ameche), proprietors of the Duke and Duke investment firm where Louis is a junior partner.

The British actor, Denholm Elliott, stars as Winthorpe’s butler, and Jamie Lee Curtis, who rose to fame in John Carpenter’s “Halloween,” plays a money-minded prostitute determined to work her way into an early retirement.

With its machine-gun pacing and its satiric stress on the extremes of urban wealth and urban indigence, “Trading Places” recalls the Depression-era classics of Preston Sturges, such as “Christmas in July” and “Easy Living.”

at the cinema

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