‘On The Fourth Day of Christmas, My True Love Sent To Me…Trading Places’ (1983)
Trading Places was one of the first big studio comedies to benefit from the VCR revolution and the phenomenon of Home Taping. It wasn’t just the Pause button that was famously deployed by millions of teenage Jamie Lee Curtis-obsessed greenhorns back in 1986 but Rewind too; scrolling back jokes and funny lines time and again until they were ingrained in the memory. eg “Back off, or I’ll rip out your eyes and piss on your brain!”
As such, by now Trading Places is a film that thousands of people of a certain age can recite from memory; a TV screening in December is like a night of carol singing, with friends joining in as one: “It ain’t cool being no jive turkey so close to Thanksgiving,” “Eggnog!” and “Those men tried to have sex with me!” It’s our God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.
Trading Places is the It’s A Wonderful Life for the Stranger Things-era generation. As much as it’s a direct variation on Mark Twain’s Price & The Pauper story, the swift descent of ghastly rich snob Louis Winthorpe III is every bit as unsettling for him as George Bailey’s trip through his alternative reality was back in 1947. Jimmy Stewart meant to commit suicide by throwing himself into a river. 36 years later Dan Aykroyd tried to shoot himself in the head, wearing a urine-soaked Santa outfit with a fake beard full of stolen salmon.
Such is the march of progress.
