Today’s guest writer, Tony Way, has worked in film and TV for over ten years, working such names as Ricky Gervais, Steve Coogan, Dustin Hoffman, Johnny Depp and Daniel Craig .
Follow Tony on Twitter @tonypaulway or visit his website here
So, here is an opinion for you – TRADING PLACES is the best Christmas movie of all time. That opinion is my opinion. The reason I’m so sure of this opinion is because of another two opinions that I have. The first is that TRADING PLACES is also the greatest comedy movie of all time. The second is that TRADING PLACES is also the greatest movie of any genre, of all time. Here are a few reasons why.
It’s not really a Christmas film. Yes, I realise that this goes against my argument for it being the greatest Christmas film ever, but bear with me. You see, the main plot of TRADING PLACES could be set at any time of the year. The main focus of the story is not Christmas itself. This stops it being all the things that many Christmas movies are – schmaltzy, over-sentimental and full of annoying child actors. When I first watched TRADING PLACES in the Eighties I was a child. As a child I did, of course, watch children’s films, but the films I really loved were made for adults, starring adults. Adults being funny was what I wanted to see, not other children. I could see plenty of those at school. Adults also know better swearwords and how to use them in the right way.
It’s Dickensian. No other writer incapsulates Christmas like Dickens and TRADING PLACES has Dickensian themes and motifs in spades. Rich and powerful misers, poverty, street crime, punishment, people falling on hard times and the collision of two worlds, one wealthy and pompous, the other poverty-stricken and crude. All of this shorthand gets you quickly into the Christmas mood. (Yes it is a Christmas film really, despite my first point.) So if you disagree that TRADING PLACES is the best ever Christmas film, then you are saying that Dickens was an idiot. Do you really want to say that? Do you?
The cast. If a film came out today starring Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd you would be forgiven for being very wary of it but at the time of TRADING PLACES, 1983, Akroyd and Murphy were at the very top of their game. This is long before THE KLUMPS or the hideous BLUES BROTHERS 2000 blotted their copy books. They are both amazing in this film. Akroyd is perfect as the over-privileged, spoilt and sneery Louis Winthorpe III. His transformation to down and out gun wielding, psychotic Santa is one of the best character arcs in movie history. Murphy is cast perfectly as the wise-talking, down-on-his-luck bum who we meet pretending to be a legless war veteran at the start of the film. Murphy is so good in TRADING PLACES that they could have just left a camera rolling on him improvising for ninety minutes and still got one of the funniest films ever made. Which is pretty much what happened in BEVERLY HILLS COP if the stories are to be believed. And let’s not forget the supporting cast – Jamie Lee-Curtis as Ophelia, the tart with a heart, Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche as the Machiavellian Duke brothers and Jim Belushi as the party Gorilla are all impeccable, but my personal favorites are Delholm Elliot as butler Coleman and Paul Gleason as the sinister Clarence Beeks. Gleason, for me gives the best ever delivery of the simple phrase ‘Fuck off!’ in this film and no one says the word ‘Eggnog?’ quite like Denholm Elliot.
Quotable lines. I could pretty much word for word tell you the whole script of this film, but I won’t. There are so many quotable lines – at least half a dozen in every scene, far too many to list here – so here is just one of my favourites:
‘It ain’t cool being no jive turkey so close to Thanksgiving.’
Like I said, there are too many to list here, take a look at the memorable quotes page on IMDB for TRADING PLACES, there are dozens there to choose from.
So that’s my case pled for TRADING PLACES. I have so much more to say that I could probably write a book, or least a long pamphlet on why TRADING PLACES is so good (the fact that if you removed all of the jokes it would still stand up as WALL STREET-style finical thriller for example but for now I will simply wish you all a very merry Christmas and a ‘Happy New Year!’
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