Synopsis for
Trading Places (1983) More at IMDbPro »

Eddie Murphy plays a dirt-poor faker who pretends to be blind and paralyzed from the waist down, rolling around the streets of Philly begging for money, while Dan Akroyd plays the rich playboy with everything, who has an easy life trading commodities for the shrewd Duke Brothers, Randolph and Mortimer, who are so successful in the commodities brokerage business that money has come to mean everything to them, while people's lives are playthings for them to ruin or promote as they see fit. In this film, a bet is made for one dollar that the Dukes can ruin the life of their nephew, Winthorpe, while elevating a street urchin to a life of a successful playboy millionaire. Eddy Murphy, playing Billy Ray Valentine, conman extra-ordinaire, accidentally runs into Winthorp, who is carrying the payroll in a briefcase, when he runs into a fleeing Billy Ray, who is trying to escape from two cops who are on to him. Thinking that Billy Ray is trying to rob him, sends Winthorpe into a tizzy, during which the cops are called and Billy Ray finds himself in a holding tank, waiting on someone to make his bail. Pretending he is a "ka-ra-tay Man", with a limo full of his "bitches" waiting on him outside the tank, Billy Ray is a wonder to behold as he fakes the moves of Bruce Lee, pulling an imaginary heart from a would-be assailant. Meanwhile, two real tough guys, not impressed, tell Eddie, "It's not wise to be a Jife Turkey, this close to Thanksgiving time." Holding Eddie up to the ceiling, against the jail cell's bars, the toughs are about to teach Eddie a lesson, when someone says he's made Bail. "I have?" he says. Wondering who has paid his bail, outside the jailhouse, as he goes down the steps, the Duke Brothers' limo pulls up, a window rolls down and the Dukes tell him to "get in!" It turns out that they have paid his bail so as to enscounce him in Dan Akroyd's mansion, complete with butler and limo. Dan, who starts out with a beautiful fiance, at the pinnacle of success, is systematically now ruined by the Dukes who first have him thrown in jail, allegedly for selling PCP, which was planted on him by Mr. Beaks, a thug hired by the Dukes to steal the Orange Juice crop report for them so they can corner the concentrated canned orange juice market. Beaks steals the real crop report, but loses it to the tricks of Eddie and Dan, who enlist Jamie Lee Curtis, and the Butler, who also doubles as a limo driver for the mansion that Dan lost. Dan meets Jamie after Beaks pays her 100 dollars to pretend Dan is her pimp who trades heroin for sex with her, in front of Dan's real fiance, who has come to bail him out of jail. The Dukes have cut off his credit cards and basically ruined his life, all for the bet of $1 dollar! In the course of the film, Dan finds out the duplicity of the Dukes, after almost killing himself, and Eddie Murphy, but gets in control of himself and takes action to confound the Dukes's machinations, in spite of the happenings in that time. We wish that Jamie Lee Curtis would expose more of herself in this comedy, but alas, we have to admit that she is a beautiful, under-rated Hollywood siren with real class. The Butler is really a first class old chap himself. It would be best, for all conerned. Lets hope the masses can get themselves out of their own problems. We dpn't have time to fix everything.