MY MOVIE SHELF: Trading Places

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 148  Days to go: 100

Movie #290:  Trading Places

The great thing about Saturday Night Live — the entire purpose, in fact — is to satirize and mock real situations in absurd ways. That’s its schtick. When people get offended by the stuff SNL does, they’re wildly missing the point, yes, but they’re also reacting, at least in part, how they are supposed to. The skits — especially the political ones — are often intended to provoke. That’s how SNL brings attention to all manner of fucked up things.

Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd were never on SNL together. Murphy joined the cast after Aykroyd had left. And technically, Trading Places is not an SNL film. But it was directed by John Landis, who wrote and directed Blues Brothers and has collaborated with a lot of SNL talent over the years, and both Aykroyd and Murphy brought their SNL experience to the set. (Murphy, in fact, was still an active cast member when Trading Places was filmed.) So I think it’s safe to say the film has an SNL sensibility to it, at the very least. And while the movie is undeniably silly and outrageous, it doesn’t fail to make several deliberate points about wealth vs. poverty in America, and the ways in which the environment and opportunities surrounding you help to mold your character.

Billy Ray Valentine (Murphy) is a con man, wheeling himself around Philadelphia on a board, pretending to be a wounded veteran, and begging for cash. He’s loud and obnoxious and pretty much just a bullshitter by trade. Louis Winthorpe III (Aykroyd), on the other hand, comes from money. He went to Harvard, is a member of a founding fathers country club, works for the illustrious Duke & Duke investment firm, is engaged to an heiress, and has a manservant named Coleman (Denholm Elliott), who pretty much does everything but wipe Winthorpe’s butt (I’m assuming). When the two cross paths and Winthorpe accuses Valentine of trying to steal the Duke & Duke payroll, the Duke brothers themselves — Randolph, played by Ralph Bellamy, and Mortimer, played by Don Ameche — make a bet as to whether they could take a man with a long history of poverty and petty crime and turn him into an upstanding citizen, while simultaneously taking someone of excellent breeding and character and turning him into a criminal. So Valentine gets Winthorpe’s cushy job and home and manservant, while Louis gets railroaded into theft and drug possession charges by shady character Clarence Beeks (Paul Gleason), who works on questionable errands for the Dukes. So Randolph proves his point about environment and wins the wager — $1 from Mortimer. The end.

Only, that’s not the end. Billy Ray overhears the Dukes and rescues Louis from his rock-bottom suicidal tendencies. They discover a plan by the Dukes to corner the frozen orange juice market, and they decide to turn the tables. Using the life savings of Coleman and Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis), the hooker with a heart of gold who took Louis in when he was destitute, they ambush Beeks with some snazzy costumes, outplay the Dukes, and wind up on a tropical beach somewhere, living the multi-millionaire life.

It’s a really funny, really great little flick. It’s well-written and sharp, and it makes great use of both spoken and physical comedy. But it’s also really clever and witty the way so soon after Billy Ray finds himself with worthwhile possessions, he finds himself unwilling to be careless with him, whereas Louis has to make do with whatever awful crap he can get his hands on, and literally eats a smoked salmon through a dirty Santa beard. Yes, the circumstances are extreme, but the concept is realistic and sound. If you’ve never had money or opportunities in your life, it’s a lot harder to “pull yourself up” to the level of someone who has had every advantage. That’s a fact.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I mostly like the movie just because it makes me laugh like crazy and I dream every day of having my own financial windfall. Even though I have absolutely no interest in employing a manservant. No offense, Coleman.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Coming to America

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 302  Days to go: 291

Movie #71: Coming to America

The first time Eddie Murphy played multiple characters in a movie, they were all funny as hell. This might be hard to believe if you’re a child of The Klumps or whatever, but it’s true. This was also back when Arsenio Hall was pretty funny in his own right, too, believe it or not.

As far as the story itself goes, Coming to America is pretty schmaltzy: Wealthy prince doesn’t want to be forced into an arranged marriage to a placid, subservient woman he doesn’t love so he goes out in search among the common folk for a worthy bride. Hilarity and romance ensue.

It’s all fairly rote, but the genius and joy of this movie is in the performances, the cameos, the inside jokes and the trappings of Akeem’s (played by Murphy) royal wealth. It’s Murphy’s movie, so he gets the most to do, and since his Prince Akeem is earnest and upstanding, he uses his two My-T-Sharp guys (barber Clarence and patron Saul) and singer Randy Watson (Sexual! Chocolate!) to do the stuff people expect out of him — be loud and obnoxious and argumentative and inappropriate and super-duper funny. Whether he’s aimlessly non-cutting Cuba Gooding Jr’s hair while arguing about how Joe Louis was the greatest boxer ever (he lost to Rocky Marciano, but he was 137 years old at the time, so) or greasily singing that the children are our future, he’s little flashes of delight without making the entire movie about him and his goofy characters. (Honestly, my favorite has always been the splendid hack joke about tasting soup delivered by Saul at the end — and when the movie first came out, the fact that Murphy was Saul was a delightful surprise in and of itself.)

Arsenio Hall is pretty much Murphy’s comedy wingman throughout, as Semmi the servant to Akeem and as barber Morris griping about Cassius Clay, but he’s the most fun as Reverend Brown — especially praising the Miss Black Awareness contestants. The duo work well off each other, foiling Samuel L. Jackson’s robbery attempts and whatnot, however they aren’t all the movie has to offer. John Amos as Cleo McDowell is hilarious explaining all the ways in which his store is not like McDonald’s, all the while sneaking peeks at McDonald’s secret files. James Earl Jones is both regal and blustery and King Jaffe Joffer, but his wife gets the last laugh when she’s all, “I thought you were the king.” (The “bitch” is implied.) There’s Louie Anderson sad-sacking it all over the place, Frankie Faison pimping it up as a landlord, a visual gag about greasy Soul Glo stains on the McDowell’s couch, and a spectacular little callback to Murphy’s Trading Places when the homeless Randolph and Mortimer Duke (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche) are the recipients of Akeem’s discarded “pocket change.” That last one is my favorite, favorite thing.

What really interests me, though, are the rhythms of Zamunda — the fictional kingdom over which Akeem’s family reigns. There are the rose bearers, of course, but who cleans those up? Is there a royal rose sweeper? Also, I’m not sure I would like to be woken up by a live orchestra, but I think it’s great how Akeem is lying in his bed perfectly still and peacefully, as if a prince would ever sleep in a rumpled bundle of sheets with his hand on his junk and one leg thrown out from under the covers. There are royal butt-wipers, who are not shown but who I assume are men, just as the royal tooth-brusher and throat-gargler and mouth-wiper are. But the royal bathers for Akeem are flawless, naked women — “The royal penis is clean.” — so I’m really hoping Lisa (Shari Headley) gets her some fine-looking vagina-scrubbers once she settles into castle life. After all, if you can’t have some perfect naked man cleansing your vagina for you, what’s the point of even being a princess? (Y’all may never look at Ariel and Jasmine the same way again.)

What it all boils down to is that Coming to America is a classic R-rated comedy (that isn’t even all that R, really, except for some shouted “fucks” — the rest could easily pass at PG-13) that I couldn’t even get the oldest girl to even feign interest in. Kids just aren’t right these days, that’s all there is to it.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Beverly Hills Cop II

This is the deal: I own around 350 movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Through June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #30: Beverly Hills Cop II

They talk about horror sequels in Scream 2. The body count is higher, the budget is bigger, the deaths are more elaborate. Action comedy sequels aren’t much different. Beverly Hills Cop II is slicker than its predecessor. It’s bigger and more stylized. It features more famous faces. It’s the same structure as the original (really, almost exactly the same), but turned up to 11. And as far as sequels go, it’s pretty successful in capitalizing on that tried and true formula, providing a solid-enough story and plenty of comedy. It’s a good one (unlike III, which — let’s forget that ever happened).

So, aside from the opening theft scene, the movie starts with Axel (Eddie Murphy) undercover as “a businessman” in Detroit (just like the first). Inspector Todd chews him out (just like the first). A friend is shot. Axel sneaks off to Beverly Hills. We’re treated to a scene of Axel driving down the streets of the super-rich city, observing all the strange and hilarious behaviors of the people who live there. Literally, all of this also happens in the first film. But everything is also amped up.

Here, instead of scamming a hotel room, he outsmarts an entire construction crew and scams himself a mansion. Instead of one hilarious strip club scene, we get a hilarious strip club scene AND a Playboy mansion scene. Instead of making an offhand joke to a valet with his piece of shit Nova, he trades jokes with Chris Rock as the Playboy mansion valet who has to park Axel’s cement truck. Instead of sneaking past one receptionist with a slapdash floral delivery excuse, we get two elaborate cons on front desk ladies who handle all deliveries/visitors. Instead of one big shootout at the end, we get two mad dashes to crimes in progress, one wild car chase involving several crashed police cruisers and a giant cement truck, and still the big shootout at the end. And instead of Axel doing pretty standard (if slick and imaginative) police work like he did in Beverly Hills Cop, Beverly Hills Cop II sees him almost as his fabled “Supercop,” cracking codes before computers, breaking into buildings while circumventing alarm tape (he was also once a supercriminal — B&Es, running numbers, etc.), being able to recognize specialized bullet casings in a single glance (far outpacing literally everyone in the Beverly Hills police department), and magically lifting fingerprints with superglue and blacklights. It’s insane how gifted this movie makes him out to be.

Of course, there are also a lot of things that don’t make any sense. Why is this crime ring referred to as the Alphabet Bandits when the only theft they committed was at the letter A place? Their B crime was popping Bogomil (Ronny Cox), but by then they were well-known by this nickname. Speaking of being well-known, why the hell is some news station in Detroit covering the shooting of a Beverly Hills police lieutenant? I mean, really. Even if it was a national news broadcast, there’s no way that makes the cut unless the “Alphabet Bandits” have been on a crime spree that’s at least made it to J. Also, how has Bogomil practically solved the mystery of the Alphabet Bandits by the time he’s gunned down (and how did they know he solved it)? Did he know they were up to something before they started robbing places? Because like I said, they only robbed the one place, and all anybody seemed to know about that one was that a 6-foot blonde (Brigitte Nielsen) was involved. As Taggart (John Ashton) says, “Six-foot blondes grow on trees in California.”

There’s also the matter of how in the world Gilbert Gottfried’s character Sydney Bernstein would think a police detective could get on Bernstein’s office computer and wipe out evidence of a bunch of parking tickets from the police department system. This is a good five years before the internet was even on college campuses. Or how that one evidentiary gun casing would lead to literally all the relevant criminals (maybe that’s how Bogomil had solved it already), including the patsy Charles Cain (Dean Stockwell, who will always be Al Calavicci in my heart). Or that Bogomil’s daughter would just so happen to work in an insurance company which just so happens to be the head criminal’s insurance company, in which there is a clear paper trail of his motive.

There are a lot of awfully convenient coincidences, is what I’m saying.

But these coincidences take nothing away from how funny it is. Taggart falling in the pool, then dressing in golf pants, then being taken for Gerald Ford. “Ooh, I love it when you talk dirty.” Paul Reiser really getting to stretch his legs in this one as annoying tag-along Jeffrey (who still does a mean Inspector Todd impression). Twins Monique and Unique. “Follow your dicks.” Rosewood (Judge Reinhold), formerly a machine-gun hater, now a gun-happy nutjob. (Remember when gun freaks were considered nutjobs? Good times.) “You know where your dick is, don’t you Big Al?” Axel standing on his tiptoes to talk to Karla (Nielsen). And Gilbert Gottfried picking up his phone off the cradle and screaming “Bitch!” into it, like there was anything other than a dial tone on the other end.

The movie makes me laugh. And, not for nothing, but I always kind of liked how Axel never keeps any of the money he gains from various sources. The $20 for Monique and Unique goes back to Rosewood so he can buy some more vitamins. The $50 he finds at the abandoned armored truck goes to Chris Rock to park the cement truck next to a limo. And the $200 he gets as a bribe from Bernstein goes to Food for the Homeless for Beverly Hills in Bernstein’s own name. Now that’s slick.

 

MY MOVIE SHELF: Beverly Hills Cop

This is the deal: I own around 350 movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Through June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #29: Beverly Hills Cop

Whenever I think about Beverly Hills Cop, I think of the second one. I’ve always thought I liked it more, but really I think it’s just that I probably saw that one first. It came out in ’87, when I was 12, whereas this one came out in ’84, when I was 9. So it follows that I likely didn’t see the first one until after I saw the second. (On that note, what kind of parents let a kid see the second movie in a series before the first? That’s got to be some kind of child abuse, right?)

The first thing I noticed on this viewing was that it was made in association with Eddie Murphy Productions. That’s pretty striking. Nowadays, actor-owned production companies are a dime a dozen, but back then I think it was still incredibly rare. Probably especially so for black actors. I realize Murphy had been in the huge hits Trading Places and 48 Hrs. by this time, not to mention being one of the breakout stars of Saturday Night Live, but I still feel like having his own production company was a pretty big deal — one that I never hear about, despite it being active in the business throughout those final fifteen or so years of the twentieth century.

This movie is really Murphy at the top of his game. I’ve grown a more objective eye over the years and can tell this is really the stronger of the two good Beverly Hills Cop movies (never acknowledge that there was a third — it never happened). He’s honed his acting skills enough that he sells his role well, but still is given enough room to spread his wings and do some of his easy comedy and character work. It’s not gimmicky at this point; it’s still fresh and funny and new, not overdone.

There’s more police work in this one, too. He’s new in Beverly Hills and the cops here don’t know him, so he has to prove himself trustworthy. Even Jenny, his friend from childhood who knows him well, is skeptical of his suspicions, so he has to work angles and find clues. The audience already knows he’s right, because we were witness to the murder of his friend by Maitland’s lackey (an almost unrecognizable Jonathan Banks, because he is so young here), but the other characters don’t and it’s nice to see Murphy as Axel Foley really work for it here.

The comedy in this one is better too — better balanced with the action, and stronger on its own. There are so many iconic moments here: getting thrown out of the window, claiming to have Herpes Simplex 10 at the Harrow Club, the entire scene at the strip club (chair dancing, claiming club soda will make him throw up, noticing the guys casing the joint, everything “Phillip,” and the wide grin with the “Okay” hand gesture after he disarms the guy), THE BANANA IN THE TAIL PIPE, and everything Serge. And there are small things to enjoy, too, like Damon Wayans as the gay hotel buffet steward who sneaks Foley some bananas, Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) being like a wide-eyed kid detective who hates machine guns, Taggart (John Ashton) bringing real tension to his early scenes with Foley, Bogomil (Ronny Cox) lying his ass off to the chief about the massive shootout at Maitland’s, and the completely underappreciated Gilbert R. Hill as Inspector Todd, who is strong, loud, authoritative, hilarious, and takes none of Foley’s shit.

It’s a great movie, and it holds up really well over time. I’ve watched it a bunch of times over the years, and it never gets old. Neither of them do.

Actually, as I sit and think about it, Beverly Hills Cop II is almost a carbon copy of the original. But we’ll get to that later tonight.