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Critics Consensus: Featuring deft interplay between Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd, Trading Places is an immensely appealing social satire.
Critic Consensus: Featuring deft interplay between Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd, Trading Places is an immensely appealing social satire.
All Critics (44) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (38) | Rotten (6) | DVD (11)
Landis' direction is deft, but the sparkling performances are the real draw not only by Murphy and Aykroyd but also by Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy as the meddling oldsters, Denholm Elliott as the gentlemanly servant and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Trading Places is a comedy of unavoidable fits and starts.
Trading Places also makes Eddie Murphy a force to be reckoned with.
This 1983 film re-creates a screwball comedy format and then eliminates everything but the crudest audience-gratification elements; any incursions into the more morally complicated side of the genre are quickly curtailed.
Trading Places is a light romp geared up by the schtick shifted by Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy.
As a satire on the internecine savagery of fiscal doings under late Reaganite capitalism, the movie is not as biting as it thinks it is; but it's still the best hoot since Arthur.
What really resonates about this comedy, some 30 years after its release, is how it was able to intuitively crystallise the whole socio-political landscape of the era.
The two stars (especially Murphy) are terrific, but the supporting cast provides additional flavor.
This blatant, unacknowledged reworking of The Prince and the Pauper is a rattling comedy showcase for the unique talents of Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd, who have seldom recaptured the form they show here.
While the two-hour running time overstretches the material, there are plenty of laughs -- as well as sly digs at the racism and greed of the American establishment.
Directed by John Landis with a surprising amount of class, though he lets some of his old Animal House' vulgarity slip ostentatiously into the action.
It's all outrageously contrived, and only surprising restraint by director John Landis makes it work. The writing is superb, too, leaving the two funnymen free to do the most inspired textured portrayals either has managed in movies.
The Book of Job meets Pygmalion in this intelligent comedy that benefits from great performances (especially by Eddie Murphy), and, no matter how utterly implausible everything we see here is, at least it sells us the whole thing with enough conviction to make it a blast.
Super Reviewer
Okay 80's comedy. Laughed a few times.
A classic 80s comedy that's still surprisingly relevant in our day.
That was amazing. Eddie Murphy killed it. Didn't like Winthorpe though.
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