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Trading Places also makes Eddie Murphy a force to be reckoned with. It takes nothing away from Aykroyd's perfect prissiness as Winthorpe, or from Bellamy and Ameche, having the time of their sunset years playing the Dukes, to say this. But Murphy, using his Tyrone Green character from Saturday Night Live as a sketch for a full-scale portrait, demonstrates the powers of invention that signal the arrival of a major comic actor, and possibly a great star. He makes Trading Places something more than a good-hearted comedy. He turns it into an event.
—By Richard Schickel