Trading Places (1983) Trading Places (1983)
John Landis's class-swap comedy in which two Philadelphia commodities-broker brothers wager a dollar that nature loses to nurture, then find out what happens when their two test subjects compare notes.
Quick Facts
| Director | John Landis |
| Writers | Timothy Harris, Herschel Weingrod |
| Year | 1983 |
| Runtime | ~116 min |
| Setting | Philadelphia (Christmas season) |
| Stars | Eddie Murphy (Billy Ray Valentine), Dan Aykroyd (Louis Winthorpe III), Jamie Lee Curtis (Ophelia), Denholm Elliott (Coleman), Don Ameche (Mortimer Duke), Ralph Bellamy (Randolph Duke) |
The Duke brothers — Randolph and Mortimer, owners of the commodities firm Duke & Duke — bet a dollar over whether environment or heredity makes a man. They engineer the destruction of their golden-boy managing director Louis Winthorpe III and the elevation of street hustler Billy Ray Valentine into Winthorpe's job, his house, and his life. The wager is a private joke between the brothers; Winthorpe and Valentine never know it has happened until Valentine overhears them at the company Christmas party. Once they compare notes, the two men ally with Coleman the butler and Ophelia, the prostitute who took Winthorpe in, to ruin the Dukes on the floor of the New York commodities exchange via a counter-con on the U.S. orange juice crop report.