As with most comedies, there is material here that aged poorly through a modern lens, but what strikes me most about Trading Places today is watching Eddie Murphy work with a funny script. What killed his career was the belief that Murphy could attach himself to any project and make it funny through sheer force of will. I would believe that writers stopped trying because why waste brain cells coming up with good jokes when Murphy is only going to change things in the moment anyway. Trading Places is from the team of Herschel Weingrod and Timothy Harris (Twins, Kindergarten Cop, Space Jam), and because Murphy was still new on the scene he has a lot of good jokes to work with. Murphy himself says this was the most fun he had making a movie and that his later films felt like “work”.
Originally written as a vehicle for Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, the big hurdle was centering so much of the film on understanding how financial markets work. This inspired the scene where the Duke Brothers explain the basics to Murphy’s Billy Ray, dumbing it down so much that when Mortimer explains that pork bellies are used to make bacon, which is found on a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, Murphy reacts by looking right into camera. Locations secured the actual World Trade Center’s commodity exchange for the trading scenes, but they could only film there over the weekend, and the production hired real traders to perform as part of the background.
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