Trading Places/YMMV

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• Complete Monster: The Duke Brothers utterly destroy Winthorpe's life and reputation to satisfy their curiosity in a social experiment, complete with a bet attached. The sum on the line? One Dollar.
  • Not to mention that they're ready and willing to send Valentine back where he came from even after he's proven he's good at the job, for no reason other than that he's black.
  • Clarence Beeks is a much bigger monster. At least the Dukes were disturbed by how badly Louis was broken by them. Beeks has absolutely no issues with destroying Winthorpe's life (to the point of murder), being antagonistic to just about everyone throughout the movie.
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: Winthorpe saying "It's kill or be killed" and "Nothing you've seen in your life can prepare you for the unbridled carnage you're about to witness" as he and Billy enter the World Trade Center for the climax.
• Genius Bonus: The music theme of Trading Places is the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro. The Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart operetta is about a servant who outwits his master.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Often re-aired in Italy during the Christmas Holidays because of its -- although vague -- Christmas theme... despite the Precision F Strike and Fan Service tropes listed in the main page.
• Jerkass Woobie: Winthorpe in the latter part of the film. He gets better.
• Magnificent Bastard: The Duke Brothers, until they get beat at their own game.
• Older Than They Think: The premise of Trading Places, where two wealthy businessmen bet over whether heredity or environment makes a gentleman, and proving it by taking a bum off the street and making him sophisticated, was previously tackled in the Three Stooges short "Hoi Polloi".
  • And funnily enough, nature rather than nurture wins out in that one.
  • It's also a bit of a twist on Pygmalion.
• The Plot Writes Real Life: In 2010, the "Eddie Murphy Rule" was proposed to prevent commodities traders from using nonpublic information, such as the Department of Agriculture crop report depicted in the film, to corner the market in the same way as shown in the movie.
• Values Dissonance: Dan Akroyd in blackface is Played for Laughs for how ridiculous the disguise is, but they still probably couldn't get away with it today.
• Values Resonance: The themes of how wealth, or the lack of it, affect the character of people, and of course the cautionary tale of people (attempting) to ruin lives to turn a profit probably make the movie a bit more poignant in the wake of the 2009 Recession. Also Anvils That Needed to Be Dropped.
• Vindicated by Cable: The movie was a box office hit, but might have faded into obscurity, if not for constant replaying on cable around Christmas-time, even though the movie is not inherently a "Christmas movie."