this is not shakespeare
Trading Places begins with music from "The Marriage of Figaro" played over scenes from around Philadelphia. Eventually, we get to Louis' townhouse, Coleman bringing him breakfast in bed on a silver tray. It's ten minutes before we meet Billy Ray, and then only briefly. The film gives us a whole city, then positions us squarely in the high-class part of it. Billy Ray's outburst, grabbing Mortimer's legs feels (deliberately) out of place in the film we've got so far. When we are with him again a couple scenes later, he's over the top and it becomes clear that this film is going to play one of these things off the other. Even if we didn't know what the movie was going to be about, we'd know that the juxtaposition is deliberate. The film offers brilliant details like Louis bragging about his Rochefoucauld watch--that it tells the time in Monte Carlo, Beverly Hills, London, Paris, Rome, and Gstaad. Except, through a screenwriting mistake or, I su...