Line #7 YMMV/TradingPlaces


1	* AccidentalAesop:
2	** Be extremely careful about the kind of people you let into your life because those people may not love you as much as you think. Winthorpe honestly believed that Penelope and his college friends cared for him, only for them to kick him to the curb once he fell from grace. Make sure that when you befriend or date someone, you find out what they really are like.
3	** Appearances do count in life, and if you want to get ahead in life, you have to shape up. Being a homeless beggar, Valentine gets little respect from high society, let alone the authorities. Once he learns to fit into high society, his life starts to improve considerably.
4	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation:
5	** Mortimer being the first one who doesn't want Winthorpe back or for Valentine to keep his job. [[spoiler: Did he really [[VillainHasAPoint decide he doesn't want Winthorpe back over turning to crime, and at a work-related function, no less]], and really not want Valentine to continue employment out of racism, or was he really just that sour over losing the bet, and [[MisplacedRetribution holds them responsible for him losing?]] While Randolph does agree with both, he does still consider finding a way to get Winthorpe back until Mortimer says he doesn't want him back, and may have considered keeping Valentine before Mortimer brought up race.]]
6	** Are Louis' former friends selfish [[DirtyCoward dirty cowards]] who abandoned their friend in his time of need? Or are they classists who, due to their upbringing, genuinely believe Louis to be a dangerous felon they want nothing to do with?
7	** How genuine was Penelope's love for Louis? After their affectionate scenes together, it is jarring to see Penelope behave so coldly to him, not showing him much comfort or sympathy when he initially gets out of jail and being ''very'' quick to dismiss him over Ophelia hitting on him, implying that Penelope was always an opportunistic GoldDigger. On the other hand, Louis getting arrested for drugs and theft looks pretty bad, and Penelope seems willing to hear him out...until Ophelia "propositions" him.
8	** [[spoiler:While the Dukes are undoubtedly racist, do they agree to dump Valentine just because they don't want to employ a black man at their company, no matter how good at his job he is? Or are they envious because a poor, uneducated black man took to his job as a broker so easily, implying a level of natural talent they almost certainly don't have?]]
9	* BestKnownForTheFanservice: We can thank ''Film/Scream1996'' for helping this be remembered as the film where Creator/JamieLeeCurtis flashes her breasts on screen for the first time.
10	* CatharsisFactor: The Dukes' ultimate defeat is immensely satisfying after they've acted totally despicable throughout the entire film with no repercussions. They get it so bad that you might almost feel bad for them. Almost.
11	* CommonKnowledge: Contrary to popular belief, the film isn't about stockbrokers, it's about ''commodity'' brokers.
12	* CryForTheDevil: The Dukes had it coming, but man do they get it bad in the end.
13	** Mortimer is left having what looks like a mental breakdown as he pathetically begs "Turn those machines back on!" and can only freak out at his brother in a desperate attempt to push the blame on anyone other than himself ("You and your noble prize! YOU IDIOT!").
14	** Randolph has a straight up heart attack and gets NoSympathy from his brother, who starts blaming their situation on him. And given his now ruined financial state, it's very likely that he'll have trouble getting proper medical care.
15	* FourthWallMyopia: While the audience knows Billy Ray really did accidentally bump into Louis and had no intention of stealing his briefcase, from Louis's perspective it comes across as Billy Ray just getting caught in the act and trying to claim it was a misunderstanding so he can avoid arrest, especially since he had previously encountered Billy Ray pretending to be a blind amputee and, in this instance, he also ran away when Louis alerted the police.
16	* GeniusBonus:
17	** The music theme of ''Trading Places'' is the Overture to ''Theatre/TheMarriageOfFigaro''. The Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart opera is about a servant who outwits his master. As Louis leaves his office, he whistles the beginning of the aria "Se vuol ballare", in which the servant reveals his plan. An instrumental version of "Non piu andrai," another aria from the same opera, plays over the climactic stock exchange scene; in the opera, the song is sung to Cherubino, a randy young man who is forced to give up his libertine life to join the army, just as the Dukes are forced to give up their easygoing lives playing with other people's destinies.
18	** The movie's title has a double meaning. It not only refers to the main plot in which two men are forced to switch lives, but also to the climax, which plays out at the New York Mercantile Exchange: a trading place.
19	** The climax itself falls in this category. Very few movies stage an ending at a stock exchange, and the plan executed by Winthorpe and Valentine is brilliantly simple in light of the public finance principles behind it. Even a child or someone with no knowledge of stocks at all would be able to understand "how can the price be going down?" means the villains are losing their money.
20	** When Valentine, [[ObfuscatingDisability claiming to be blind]], has his sunglasses forcibly removed, he starts rhythmically bobbing his head from side to side. While this helps him avoid visibly looking at things, it's also an imitation of the head motions famously made by blind musician Music/StevieWonder while performing. Also sunglasses disguise the fact that his eyes are still moving, which would show he isn't blind.
21	** Billy Ray's "alias" while lying about being in the Green Berets was "Agent Orange." Agent Orange was an herbicide used by the American army in Vietnam that was notorious for the health defects it caused in both Vietnamese civilians and U.S. soldiers.
22	* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: Since 1997, it's ALWAYS re-aired in Italy during Christmas Eve because of its - admittedly vague - Christmas theme... despite the Precision F-Strike and Fanservice tropes listed in the main page. It's to the point that Italians joke that "it's not Christmas without Trading Places".
23	* SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments:
24	** There's something nice about how Coleman told Valentine to be himself and "no matter what happens, they can't take that away from you." It shows how not only does he feel guilty for putting Winthorpe through this, but he also feels guilty for putting Valentine through this too.
25	** Ophelia goes from wanting to help Louis for his money to genuinely care about him as a person.
26	* HilariousInHindsight: A lot of people were reminded of this movie in 2021, when some Reddit posters concocted an extremely successful scheme to take advantage of hedge funds short-selling [=GameStop=] stocks to pump up the price and make money for themselves at the expense of the funds, in a very similar scheme to Winthorp and Valentine's.
27	* SugarWiki/HeReallyCanAct: At the time, most studio executives believed Creator/DanAykroyd's acting career was over following long time partner Creator/JohnBelushi's death. This film proved he could play off other actors and he's had a long, steady career since.
28	* JerkassWoobie: Winthorpe in the latter part of the film. [[ThrowTheDogABone He gets]] [[CharacterDevelopment better]].
29	* LoveToHate: The Dukes are such enormous assholes that it's hard not to enjoy and laugh at their douchebag nature. Creator/RalphBellamy and Creator/DonAmeche's devious performances only help.
30	* MemeticMutation: "[[VillainousBreakdown Turn those machines back on!]] '''''[[SkywardScream TURN THOSE MACHINES BACK ON!!!]]'''''"
31	* SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome: The Dukes' downfall. VERY satisfying.
32	* MoralEventHorizon:
33	** While the Dukes had slowly gained their way up into this territory already, [[spoiler: the BathroomStallOfOverheardInsults scene depicts them not only gloating about switching the lives of two men (and thus destroying the life of one) over a bet for ''one dollar'', but also deciding to leave both men homeless and worse off than before (they have no interest in rescuing Winthorpe from the gutter and intend to get rid of Valentine, adding a [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain racial slur]] just for a final touch). From this point their immensely satisfying downfall starts to take place]].
34	** If the above hadn't already (or the whole plan in general), Mortimer's response to his brother having a heart attack certainly tipped him over the edge:
35	--->'''Mortimer:''' ''FUCK'' HIM!
36	* OlderThanTheyThink:
37	** The premise, where two wealthy businessmen bet over whether heredity or environment makes a gentleman, and proving it by taking a bum off the street and making him sophisticated, was previously tackled in Film/TheThreeStooges short "Hoi Polloi". And funnily enough, nature rather than nurture wins out in that one.
38	** Older than that: Creator/MarkTwain had a short story about two rich men betting on whether or not a bum would benefit if bearing only a single 10,000 pound note. Although the rich men were actually benevolent in that story.
39	** Older than THAT, even. The story bears some similarities to the ''Literature/BookOfJob'' (the Devil bets Job will turn away from God when the Devil ruins his life).
40	** The method by which the Dukes get theirs is pretty similar to what happens to Danglars in ''Literature/TheCountOfMonteCristo''.
41	* ParodyDisplacement: It's lost on modern viewers, but in the restaurant scene, when Billy Ray gets asked about wheat, the entire room stops speaking and leans in to hear his advice. This was referencing a series of 1980s commercials for the brokerage firm, E.F. Hutton. Their slogan was, "When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen."
42	* RetroactiveRecognition:
43	** Creator/GiancarloEsposito played Valentine's young cellmate. He was leaning against the prison bars and moved out of the way just before the Dukes bailed Billy Ray out.
44	** Creator/BarryDennen plays Demitri, the foreign servant who takes Coleman's order in the ending scene. He would later go on to voice [[VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty Fatman]] and [[VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas Dean Domino]].
45	** The white longshoreman who sees Beeks and the real gorilla off is played by Gary Howard Klar, who would two years later play [[Film/DayOfTheDead1985 Private Steele]].
46	** Creator/ArleenSorkin plays [[MsFanservice the buxom woman]] whom Coleman helps put her coat on as she leaves Billy Ray's party. She's better known nowadays as the voice of ComicBook/HarleyQuinn in the Franchise/DCAnimatedUniverse starting in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries''.
47	* SampledUp: The {{blackface}} scene had [[https://youtu.be/oCERfa8LcS4?t=22s chanting]] that was later sampled in dance music as a sound effect, [[https://youtu.be/_URFoqkwWLY which got popularized with this song]].
48	* StrawmanHasAPoint: Louis is definitely an elitist, bigoted snob at the beginning of the film, but it's easy to see how Billy Ray's actions when they meet could be interpreted as the guy trying to steal his briefcase and then weasel out of getting arrested from his perspective.
49	* TearJerker:
50	** As hilarious as Louis' deterioration can seem, it is still quite [[TraumaCongaLine gut-wrenching]]: the man is betrayed by his employer, abandoned by his butler, ditched by his friends and fiance, and by the end [[spoiler: he's become a suicidal wreck]].
51	** [[spoiler: Despite Valentine proving more than qualified for the job, the Dukes don't want to hire him just because he's black, and plan also to leave Billy Ray in the poor house]].
52	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: Louis' friends and fiancé ditch him once his life goes down the drain. One would expect them to appear in the final scene [[spoiler: when Louis and Billy Ray get rich and bankrupt the Dukes, [[FairWeatherFriend deciding to worm their way back into Louis' life]] [[GoldDigger now that Louis is loaded]], [[LaserGuidedKarma only for Louis to turn them down coldly]]]]. But they vanish from the movie once they kick Louis out of their lives.
53	* UnintentionalPeriodPiece:
54	** At the time the film was made, using misappropriated or "insider" information to invest in commodities (as opposed to the stock and bond market) was ''not'' a crime, although a government courier could still get in trouble for unauthorized release of government information [[spoiler:like the crop report in the film]]. The law that changed this, Section 136 of the Wall Street Transparency and Accountability Act, [[note]]also called the Dodd-Frank Act[[/note]] enacted in 2010, is informally known as the "Eddie Murphy Rule." The chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission [[ThereShouldBeALaw specifically referred to the film]] when [[http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/SpeechesTestimony/opagensler-25 first publicly proposing the rule change]].
55	** A lot of what goes down at the stock market in this movie is also not possible now thanks to computers -- pit trading and open outcry are no longer widely used, for example.
56	** In one scene, Clarence Beeks uses a pay phone to communicate with the Dukes. Nowadays, he'd be chatting with them using a cell phone.
57	** One gag is Billy Ray pretending to be a Vietnam vet to two cops who were also Vietnam vets who aren't fooled for a minute. The three look relatively young for vets, which was possible in the early 80s but not so in the 2020s when most Vietnam vets are in their 70s at the youngest.
58	* ValuesDissonance:
59	** Winthorpe's {{blackface}} disguise would, simply put, not fly today.
60	** Valentine's use of the word "faggot" would be a lot more difficult to accept from a sympathetic character in a 21st century movie. Had the film been made today, assuming he were allowed to use the word at all, his CharacterDevelopment would probably have involved him learning such language was wrong. Granted, it's common in many poor neighborhoods to casually use insults, and sometimes they're [[InsultOfEndearment friendly greetings]], but most viewers would still find the use of outright slurs beyond the pale.
61	* ValuesResonance:
62	** The themes of how wealth, or the lack of it, affect the character of people, and of course the cautionary tale of people (attempting) to ruin lives to turn a profit probably make the movie a bit more poignant in the 21st century, as wealth inequality has increased significantly.
63	** Ophelia is a positive portrayal of a sex worker for the era. When movies at the time depicted hookers as pathetic [[BrokenBird Broken Birds]] or [[PredatoryProstitute evil criminals]], Ophelia is portrayed as a self-sufficient and street-smart businesswoman who comes to care for Louis and [[HookerWithAHeartOfGold has a big heart]]. With the growth of the sex-positive movement and the criminalization of sex work under greater scrutiny, many people would be more charmed by Ophelia.

Context YMMV / TradingPlaces