TRADING RACES

TRADING PLACES (1983)
dir: John Landis

TRADING RACES
MAD #246, April 1984
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker

Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) is the pampered director at the Duke and Duke brokerage firm, living in a townhouse waited on by his butler Coleman (Denholm Elliott). Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) is a lowly street hustler. He bumps into Louis one day, Louis thinks he's being robbed, and Louis' bosses Randolph (Ralph Bellamy) and Mortimer Duke (Don Ameche) see this and decide to conduct a wager—switch the lives of the two of them and observe the results. This begins a campaign to set up Louis Winthorpe into a spiral of decline. Billy Ray, meanwhile, is being groomed to be his successor.

More than likely a subversion of the watermelon and fried chicken trope in the next to last panel, especially considering they avoided Aykroyd in blackface later on, though I can't figure out the meta-joke. Boy, were we racist forty years ago.

Louis Winthorpe is framed for dealing drugs, shunned by society, and his engagement is broken off. At the police station, he meets Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis), a prostitute, and moves in with her having nowhere to go. Billy Ray overhears the Duke Brothers (not to be confused with Them Duke Boys) talking about their bet while in the bathroom and plots revenge, bringing Louis and Ophelia in on the plot.

Billy Ray is aware that the firm has obtained information about orange crops from the government. A Duke employee is bringing that information in a suitcase on a train and the plot involves secretly switching it with a forgery so the brothers will get the wrong information, sell their stocks, and lose all their money. Louis, Billy Ray, Ophelia, and Coleman go on the train in disguise, and they, with the proper information, are able to buy up all the stocks and become rich.

There's a parody of Risky Business after this, which is what Siskel and Ebert are talking about.

From Recasting Old Movies with Today's Famous Wrestlers by John Prete (John Ficarra) and Sam Viviano, from #285, March 1989.