Missing From AFIs Top 100 Comedies
Trading Places (1983)
Starring Eddie Murphy & Dan Akroyd
Some random thoughts about this movie...I'm too scatter brained to organize them right now.
This is my favorite comedy, a movie I watch at least 5 times a year and one of the more quotable movies out there. It was made during the good times, when Eddie & Dan were peaking, when all good comedies were rated R, when Van Halen was still cool & Eddie Murphy was still funny.
Dan Akroyd plays the snooty wall street guy, the drunken Santa Claus, the helpless friendless soul living with a hooker as a business agreement, the rastafarian.
Eddie Murphy plays the street scammer, the "legless war veteran", the inmate braggart, the savvy stockbrocker who makes decisions based on street psychology.
Ralph Bellamy & Don Ameche doing a Statler/Waldorff routine. Jamie Lee Curtis with the token 80s boob shots. Frank Oz cameo (I dig Frank Oz). The Breakfast Club teacher playing a corporate spy. Bo Diddley in the pawnshop ("in Philadelphia it's worth fifty bucks"). James Belushi in a gorilla suit (this is the reason I own a gorilla suit BTW). Al Franken. Denholm Elliot ("Coleman? There's no Coleman here...")
I think I've always liked comedies where people switched places (Freaky Friday w/Jodie Foster was an early fave) and this is one of the best. This theme is what makes Brewster's Millions watchable for me. What would I do if this happened to me?
A few great scenes:
DA as drunken Santa on the bus, pulling salmon out of his dirty beard & eating it. DA hanging with his ivy league pals.
EM paddling around on the street pretending to be blind & legless until the cops pick him up. "I've got legs! Praise Jesus!"
EM singing in the hot tub "when I was a kid if we wanted jacuzzi we had to fart in the tub"
EM in the prison cell, EM in the limo, EM smoking a joint on the john....EM controls every scene he's in.
And of course the scene in the train car where even Jamie Lee Curtis is funny ("yes, I am Inga from Sveden").
A few quotes (there are TONS in this movie):
"Those men wanted to have sex with me!"
"It was the Dukes! It was the Dukes!"
"Beef jerkey time"
"It ain't cool to be no jive ass turkey...so close to Thanksgiving" "Yeah"
"thank you for correcting my English which stinks"
If you haven't seen this movie, you didn't get the joke in Coming to America where Eddie Murphy gives Randolph & Mortimer a bag of money, and Randolph says "Mortimer, we're back!"
Starring Eddie Murphy & Dan Akroyd
Some random thoughts about this movie...I'm too scatter brained to organize them right now.
This is my favorite comedy, a movie I watch at least 5 times a year and one of the more quotable movies out there. It was made during the good times, when Eddie & Dan were peaking, when all good comedies were rated R, when Van Halen was still cool & Eddie Murphy was still funny.
Dan Akroyd plays the snooty wall street guy, the drunken Santa Claus, the helpless friendless soul living with a hooker as a business agreement, the rastafarian.
Eddie Murphy plays the street scammer, the "legless war veteran", the inmate braggart, the savvy stockbrocker who makes decisions based on street psychology.
Ralph Bellamy & Don Ameche doing a Statler/Waldorff routine. Jamie Lee Curtis with the token 80s boob shots. Frank Oz cameo (I dig Frank Oz). The Breakfast Club teacher playing a corporate spy. Bo Diddley in the pawnshop ("in Philadelphia it's worth fifty bucks"). James Belushi in a gorilla suit (this is the reason I own a gorilla suit BTW). Al Franken. Denholm Elliot ("Coleman? There's no Coleman here...")
I think I've always liked comedies where people switched places (Freaky Friday w/Jodie Foster was an early fave) and this is one of the best. This theme is what makes Brewster's Millions watchable for me. What would I do if this happened to me?
A few great scenes:
DA as drunken Santa on the bus, pulling salmon out of his dirty beard & eating it. DA hanging with his ivy league pals.
EM paddling around on the street pretending to be blind & legless until the cops pick him up. "I've got legs! Praise Jesus!"
EM singing in the hot tub "when I was a kid if we wanted jacuzzi we had to fart in the tub"
EM in the prison cell, EM in the limo, EM smoking a joint on the john....EM controls every scene he's in.
And of course the scene in the train car where even Jamie Lee Curtis is funny ("yes, I am Inga from Sveden").
A few quotes (there are TONS in this movie):
"Those men wanted to have sex with me!"
"It was the Dukes! It was the Dukes!"
"Beef jerkey time"
"It ain't cool to be no jive ass turkey...so close to Thanksgiving" "Yeah"
"thank you for correcting my English which stinks"
If you haven't seen this movie, you didn't get the joke in Coming to America where Eddie Murphy gives Randolph & Mortimer a bag of money, and Randolph says "Mortimer, we're back!"
posted by scrooner at 10:11 AM
11 Comments:
Guess I'm the only one who likes this movie. If you can't say something nice...
Definitely a favorite over here. Was one of those movies that ran endlessly on our college video channel, but even if we saw it 100 times, if you flipped past it you wound up watching it from wherever it was.
Eddie Murphy has some sort of bizarre racism negating super power. He's the only man in the world who could be blatantly gay under the cover of extreme homophobia, get arested for soliciting sex from transvestites, work his foot fetishes in to his movies, and then still resurrect his career by performing in Disney kid films.
Trading Places blows.
Dan Akroyd has never been funny ever. Ever.
Dan Akroyd's usually the straight guy, so it's hard to tell when he's funny or not. This is a man who had to pair up with Jim Belushi, Eddie Murphy, Bill Murray, John Candy, Tom Hanks & Chevy Chase in their comedic prime...of course he's going to be the straight guy.
He's pretty good as the lead in Coneheads though, one of the more underrated comedies of the 90s.
At least Trading Places was one of the 500 nominees. Of course with the panel selecting 25 movies made in 1942 or earlier, some that we loved in our lifetime were not going to make the top 100. Of the top 10, I particularly enjoyed Blazing Saddles (#6) and Tootsie (#2).
I can't believe that although nominated, Forrest Gump didn't make the top 100. Maybe it's because it was more of a drama than a comedy.
Good movies are the ones that you WANT to watch again. Damone had it right...it is a damn good movie if you will start watching it no matter where it is in the movie. Caddyshack comes to my mind. There are plenty of movies, especially in recent years, that seem really good right after seeing. Then you watch it again and realize that the entire movie hinged upon a trich ending or something. May still be watchable, but the spark is missing. Gimmicks do not make good movies.
For comedies, Blues Brothers (Akroyd may be flawed compared to his comedy class, but still had done some funny stuff...like Driving Miss Daisy), Happy Gilmore (Fake hands on Wethers, Bob Barker...Cmon!), Dumb and Dumber, the movie 1942, M*A*S*H, Animal House (only thing that attracted me to frats), and The Passion.
Is Cabin Fever on that list? If anybody has ever seen that movie, then you would know exactly what I'm talking about.
Since we are on the movie theme...... what about those good/bad movies. C'mon, you guys know what I'm talking about. Point break, Pitch Black, anything with Ice Cube where he says, "BBBBIIIITTTTCCCHHH!" (interchangeable with L.L. Cool J), etc.
Along with what Dabone said about those movies that you can just walk in the middle of. I like to think of TNT and their promo, Movies For Guys Who Like Movies. The ultimate love story between two dudes before there was Brokeback Mountain. Of course I'm referring to The Shawshank Redemption and how many times I have walked into that one even though I had already seen it a cazillion times. Anything Harrison Ford with Action pre-1995 comes to mind, too.
Harrison Ford is great only because of his frantic run...did it in Star Wars, did it in Indiana Jones, did it in Tom Clancy movies...I love me some Harrison running with arms flailing.
Ice Cube where he says, "BBBBIIIITTTTCCCHHH!" (interchangeable with L.L. Cool J)
Nice, all black rapper/actors look alike to the point they are interchangable. This blog makes me uncomfortable.
But really, "LL Cool J is hard as hell!" Check his movies, especially the horror ones (H20, Deep Blue). Isn't the joke that the black guy dies in the first 10 minutes? He is not only a rap legend, but also a movie mack in that he must have contracts that do not allow him to die. Hell, Samuel L. Jackson gets eaten by a shark in the first 20 minutes of Deep Blue while LL smooths his way to the end.
That's what I'm sayin. No, if I was making that comparison, then I would have mentioned the scene where Will Smith punches out the Alien in Independence Day. He clearly isn't in the same league with L.L. Cool J and Ice Cube. L.L. and Cube are da shit!
What about Harrison Ford's frantic run in Frantic?
One of my wife's favorite movie scenes of all time is where Harrison Ford is clumsily trying to climb across a rooftop & he loses his shoe & drops his briefcase & he's in danger of falling off the roof....Jen can't stop laughing the entire time.
For as cool as the Han Solo and Indiana Jones characters are...they run like complete spazzes.
I forgot about Cube's contracts...I don't think he ever dies either. Today was a good day.
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