The 1983 movie that inspired the ‘Eddie Murphy Law’ 30 years later: “Serves the public”
There’s a strong argument to be made about which Eddie Murphy movie is the greatest, given just how many comedy classics he has starred in.
48 Hrs is one of the most impressive debut performances ever, Beverly Hills Cop created a formula for future action-comedies, Coming to America featured him playing many different characters, Dreamgirls earned him his first and only Academy Award nomination, and Dolemite Is My Name showed him at his most heartfelt because he was paying tribute to another great Black entertainer and filmmaker. But in terms of pure laughs, it’s hard to argue with the enduring appeal of Trading Places.
Trading Places matched Murphy with Dan Aykroyd for a hilarious case of two wildly different characters switching lives, and has more memorable quotes than nearly any other 1980s comedy.
The film has all the snarky one-liners, raunchy humour, and ridiculous gags that one would expect from a Murphy feature, but it also offered a rather scathing commentary on the greed of Wall Street that came out at the height of the Ronald Reagan administration. Oliver Stone may have more overtly tackled the same topics four years later with his Oscar-winning film Wall Street, but it was Murphy and director John Landis who got there first.
Trading Places features an unfair financial deal led by the greedy bankers Randolph (Ralph Bellamy) and Mortimer Duke (Don Ameche), who illegally obtain information from the Agriculture Department’s report in order to guide the trades that they place. It’s through this con that they are able to win profits, forcing the characters played by Murphy and Aykroyd to team up.
Although the movie had shone a spotlight on the unfair practice way back in 1983, it didn’t end up impacting United States law until 2010, when a ban was proposed on insider trading of government information. The proposal was nicknamed the ‘Eddie Murphy Law’, given that people best understood the concept through the reference to Trading Places. It’s a reference that continues to be in use and has reappeared within recent rulings on the DOJ’s decisions on event contracts.
Although there are some ‘80s comedies that get accused of not having aged well, Trading Places has its heart in the right place when it comes to telling the perspective of the common man. Even though Aykroyd plays a pretentious Wall Street insider and Murphy plays a petty street hustler, they end up discovering that they have a lot in common because they are both getting screwed over by the powers-that-be.
It also featured an early role for Jamie Lee Curtis, who was able to go beyond the “scream queen” persona she’d adopted after Halloween by taking on a more comedic role. It was also a breakout film for Jim Belushi, whose appearance came only a few years after Landis had worked with his late brother on The Blues Brothers.
One of the most important aspects of Trading Places is that it showed how brilliant Murphy could be when matched with an equally talented co-star, and while many of his less successful films in the 21st century were solo ventures, Murphy has a long history of teaming up with other comedians, such as Arsenio Hall in Coming to America, Steve Martin in Bowfinger, and Mike Myers in Shrek… Should Murphy seek to make another classic, he should search for a promising co-star to share the screen with.
