What is Trading Places about?
A snobbish investor and a wily street con-artist find their positions reversed as part of a bet by two callous millionaires.
Does it have a happy ending? (spoiler-safe)
Yes. It lands on a happy note.
Trading Places (1983)
Two callous millionaires swap the lives of a snobbish investor and a street con artist in a brisk, satirical comedy.
Campy and crowd-pleasing, with dry wit. A date-night pick at a brisk pace. Emotionally it carries some weight.
Streaming on Kanopy (free), Hoopla (free) and YouTube (free).
Trading Places parents guide
It stays inside its R, with moderate sex and nudity, and some violence.
- Scare
- Not scary
- Jump scares
- None noted
- Gore
- No gore
- Violence
- Some violence
- Some fighting or peril.
- Sex and nudity
- Moderate
- Moderate means a sex scene or nudity on screen, even brief, or sexual violence that is described or implied but never shown.
- Language
- Moderate
- Some strong profanity, a few f-words.
How we rate: an AI reads what is known about each title and tags it 0 to 3; we check the tags against a hand-rated set and correct them by hand when readers tell us. Estimates, not a scene-by-scene review. Spot a mistake? Tell us.
Cast and crew
Directed byJohn Landis
StarringDan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Ralph Bellamy, Don Ameche, Denholm Elliott, Jamie Lee Curtis
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Trading Places is on our Christmas, New Year's Eve, 1980s, Comedy on Kanopy and Comedy on Hoopla lists.
More like this feeling
Prompts we typed into CouchRot, and the lists that share its tags.
- “funny but not stupid, under two hours”
- “a fun halloween movie, not too scary”
- “a movie that will make me cry”
Lists with the same feel: Date night and Comfort watches.
Five more like Trading Places
Say the mood. Five picks with where they stream, right here.
Uses the TMDB API; not endorsed or certified by TMDB. Intensity, content, tone and pace tags are CouchRot's own.