the groundhog day project

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...

Something I didn't know the first time I saw Trading Places : it was supposed to be a Richard Pyror and Gene Wilder vehicle. Pryor dropped out. Eddie Murphy came in, got Wilder out (according to random trivia bit on IMDb) so he wouldn't look like he was "just trying to be another Pryor. Something I did know: Yoda, Marcus Brody, and Laurie Strode are in this. It's Christmas season. Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) is a commodities trader, rich, snooty, with a classy fiancé to match. Billy Ray Valentine (Murphy) is poor, he pretends to be a bling, legless Vietnam vet to beg for money. Their lives are about to get switched, because high concept comedy is a good start. Real classist deconstruction is where you go from there. Or where this movie goes from there. Billy Ray--who's black, in case you don't know who Eddie Murphy is, you cinematically uneducated miscreant--accidentally bumps into Louis--who's white, you filmically inexperienced buffoon--and pic...