"Trading Places" 1983

“Trading Places”

“Merry New Year!”

OK, so it isn’t New Year yet, but it is time for another great eighties classic. This is the classic marriage of two Saturday Night Live greats. Dan Aykroyd is brilliantly uptight. Eddie Murphy is at his smart ass best. Together they have an amazing chemistry. Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche bring old Hollywood villains to the mix. Finally Jamie Lee Curtis to offer sage advice and romance for Dan Aykroyd’s Louis.

I love this movie because it is fun. It is almost thirty years old and it still glows with a vibrancy that comedies of today don’t have. It doesn’t ask permission for it’s ridiculous moments. That is the great thing about an eighties movies, they can have a guy trapped in an ape suit and put on a boat to the jungle and we love it.

Dan Aykroyd can go from making very proper love to his fiancée’ to being the dirtiest Santa stealing a whole smoked fish at a cocktail party. Eddie Murphy can be rolling in a cart and pretending he lost his legs in Vietnam one minute and wearing designer suits and kicking his freeloading party friends out of his tasteful brownstone the next.

And we totally buy the fact that two old rich guys go through this elaborate scheme for a one dollar bet.

I remember this being a movie that we rented when I was in junior high or high school. This was when VCRs were cost prohibitive. My dad would have three days off in a row and would rent a VCR and a pile of movies to watch over the weekend. The VCR weighed about forty pounds and came in a huge case. You had to leave a credit card imprint in case you decided not to return it.

Dad liked a good western and John Wayne was a god in our house, but he also loved to laugh. He would sit in his chair with a glass full of ice and a two liter of Diet Coke between his knees and watch them one after the other. His laugh was infectious. My son laughs the same way. It is a full body laugh, uncontrolled and unconscious. And awesome. There really is nothing better than watching a funny movie with someone that really laughs.