It’s a great little slice of 1980s comedy, which isn’t made anymore. And I think I would love to see a sequel. Now, I’ll be honest. I’m not a big fan of the sequel. About 90% of the time they’re made for nothing but financial reasons. The reason for this sequel would also be financial, but in a different way.

I won’t bore you with the plot of the first film. You know what it’s about.

In Trading Places 2 we could fast forward to late 2006. What with the current climate and all I’d be interested to see what has happened to “The OJ Four” of Valentine, Winthorpe, Ophelia and Coleman, and whether they could somehow sort out the financial crisis of 2007–present before it happened.

Maybe Valentine and Winthrope could put their funds in the housing market. Maybe introduce two new characters into the sequel. An ex hooker, Fannie Mae (played by Tina Fey) and Freddie Mac (Romany Malco) who happens to be Valentine’s uncouth cousin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjDbJQKDXCY

Plotlines could tie up a couple of loose ends from the 1983 film. During the re-cap style intro/credit sequence maybe a quick explanation of orange cropped climactic scene would be nice. What happened to Beeks and that gorilla ? We see the slight return of fortune for the Dukes in Coming To America, so maybe their steady rise back to the top ?

It would be a comedy made in 2009/2010. So Judd Apatow has to be involved and the chubby one from Superbad appears somewhere. And both Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd need the work.

Above this bit of text is a deleted scene, removed due to its length/value. It’s the scene where Clarence Beeks (Paul Gleason), steals the crop report. This had been placed between the sequences where Valentine listens in secretly on his office line to the phone conversation between the Dukes and Beeks, then THIS scene – going into where Beeks carries the briefcase headed to board the train on New Year’s Eve.

Many (at first) thought that this was edited out due to the producers not properly obtaining the copyright permission for using Sunset Boulevard. Some public/cable TV stations still air the film with this scene, but it was never shown in the original theatrical release.

© BRWC 2010.