George's "considering" of Jamie Lee's form when she takes off her top was both my reaction when I was a kid and hilarious.

It's so easy to watch this and think, "Oh, that's Eddie Murphy, fully formed movie star" without stopping to realize that when this movie was released he had just turned 22 years old and this was his 2nd movie.

As much as Dan, Eddie, and Jamie deserve all the praise for this film, I feel that Denholm Elliott's portrayal of "Coleman" the butler is under-appreciated.  The many, many subtle things he does in every scene are just perfection.  The weary- and worried- look on his face when he finds his employer with his pants down: perfect.  His wiping his hand after hanging up with the Dukes: "What a scumbag," as though simply holding the phone feels icky when talking to those two.  As much as Akroyd's character is a total douchebag at the beginning, Coleman still feels that what the Dukes are doing is horrible, and though he loyally plays his role, there is a flicker of doubt and pity in his eyes when he has to claim not to know who Louis is.  The look of bemusement at the drunk naked women at Valentine's party: don't usually see that kind of thing at Mr. Winthorpe's parties.  His portrayal of a drunk Irish priest is hilarious.  And of course my favorite of all: "Eggnog?"  He says it with such fierce determination; all of his righteous anger and resentment at the Duke brothers funneled into a single, otherwise innocuous word.  Just: "Eggnog?"  He delivers it so perfectly.  Elliott is a tremendous acting talent, with a career spanning decades; this supporting role is up there with my favorites of all time.

But without the train scene we wouldn't have gotten to see a young Al Franken. There are a lot of people in this movie who went on to become better known, like Giancarlo Esposito in the jail cell.

“Hello, I am Inga from Sweden.”
“But…you’re wearing lederhosen.”
“Ya, Sweden for sure.”😂😂😂
I love this movie!!!!👍

Don't ask me why but in Italy this movie has been on tv every single Christmas' eve since 1997. It has become a sort of tradition, to the point that when the channel tried to do something else in 2005 it received lots of complaints.

The police officer who finds the PCP on Louis is played by Frank Oz, aka Yoda/Miss Piggy, and the director of such comedy classics as Little Shop of Horrors, and Bowfinger (also with Eddie Murphy). He also appears in the most famous Dan Aykroyd/John Landis collaboration, The Blues Brothers, as a very similar character.

Some fun facts:
The woman hitting on Eddie Murphy in the fancy restaurant during dinner is Jamie Lee Curtis sister.

Valentine and Winthorpe were originally supposed to be played by Richard Pryor and Geene Wilder

Supposedly Don Ameche (Mortimer) hated swearing so much he initially refused to shoot the last wall-street trading floor scene but in the end agreed to do one take only, and apologizing profusely to everyone for it.

An insider trading law was named after eddie murphy because of this movie.

Before this movie Jamie Lee Curtis was only known as a "Scream Queen" in horror movies, it was also the first movie she showed off nudity in, which is a bit odd considering "Scream Queens" often lost pieces of clothing to reveal some skin while being chased by murderers and monsters.

The train sequence is worth it for “Merry New Year! Beef jerky time.”

Trading floors are now all computerised. In the days of paper trading an exchange member would effectively have unlimited margin within the trading day before trades were reconciled, so they really could lose everything if they were sufficiently over-confident. Edit: probably what was happening is that the Dukes were buying more orange juice futures than they actually had the money to pay for (confident that the price would rise and they could sell again before having to pay for them). Valentine and Winthorpe were probably shorting them, and then closed out their position after the news came in (that was the second flurry of actiivity) to walk away with a big cash gain. Edit 2: A less realistic part is which account they would be trading - they wouldn't be membrrs of the exchange and their trader IDs would be for Duke&Duuke. Maybe Winthorpe was able to get help from a contact at another firm.

"You're a DEAD MAN, Valentine!!!"
"It...was...the...Dukes! It...was...the...Dukes!"
Such a classic comedy for all times!!! 😂😂

The train sequence may have been runtime filler, but it's pretty hilarious.

19:42 Not many people notice, the pawn shop guy is Bo Diddley.

The two characters didn't set up the train with the party, that was a happy coincidence. Yes back in the 80's costume parties for new years was a thing. Dan's character had to dress up someway, he was too recognizable to just show up in a wig, hat or glasses. The only other choice was to not be there. As for beeks, all I have to say about him is  HAHHAHAHAHAHJAJHAJAJAHJAAHAHAHAAA

The bidding for oranges at the end is still fresh in my memory. Most traders even today reference this movie. A cult classic, despite being a mainstream hit.

The pawn shop owner was played by Bo Diddly, one of the founding fathers of rock and roll and the creator of the Bo Diddly beat, the heartbeat of rock. This was Eddie Murphy's second movie, his first being 48 Hours. Both were box office hits. His next movie after Trading Places was Beverly Hills Cop which gave him his first solo starring role. That was a huge hit. Those first three movies solidified him as an A-list comedy actor.

I can get the guy not recognizing Jamie Lee Curtis, even though he hired her. I mean he hired her on the spot as a random hooker that he spotted. He didn't know her or know of her before that 10 second encounter.

Hey, don't come down on George for being stunned into silence by the Jamie Lee Curtis breastesses. That scene has got to be one of the top 10 most re-wound scenes in VHS videocassette history!

There's countless videos that explain the finale in detail, but the main thing is that commodities futures are contracts to either buy something that isn't actually available yet, or to sell something you don't have yet - at a specific point in the future, at a specific price. For crops like oranges, this allows people to hedge against dramatic price changes in case a harvest goes bad, but there's nothing on the books that says you can't trade futures contracts if you don't actually have the ability to produce or consume oranges. You're just promising that at a certain point (like April), you're going to pay someone for oranges, or sell oranges to someone, at an agreed price. So most of the people you're seeing in that pit have nothing to do with the actual orange juice industry - they're just speculators trading the contracts themselves around.

In essence they tricked the Duke brothers into borrowing a ton of money to buy up the entire orange market, believing there will be a shortage and prices will skyrocket and cover the loan with plenty to spare. But because they got sent a fake crop report, there was no shortage, and when everyone else who tried to take advantage of the uptrend got caught out with oranges that weren't worth nearly as much as they'd hoped, Winthorpe and Valentine swooped in and bought them out at rock bottom prices as people tried to minimize their losses. It's sorta Chekhov'ed with the pork belly conversation earlier.

This was so iconic that actual anti-insider-trading laws were passed that were inspired by this scene. (I'm not sure if they're still in effect, *eyeroll*)

Don Ameche (Mortimer Duke) was so against saying profanity especially the f-bomb, so when Randolph has his heart attack and Mortimer says “F… HIM”, Ameche agreed on the condition that he would only say it once and never again even if the camera didn’t get it right on take.