This film comes from the early middle 1980s, and it’s definitely a product of its time.
Eddie Murphy was beginning his ascent to being a box office superstar–he’d done 48 Hours the year before, and Beverly Hills Cop was a year in the future. Wait, then it was Coming to America in 1987, but The Golden Child in between, and maybe that was it–Boomerang and The Distinguished Gentleman and Vampire in Brooklyn were kinda flops, so aside from a couple of sequels which did okay, it was onto the silly family movies and remakes in the middle 1990s. Maybe Eddie Murphy’s heydey coincided with my youth and watching Raw and The Golden Child over and over on Showtime whilst in the trailer.
Still, one detects a certain theme in Murphy’s works: The fish out of water. The con out of jail. The Detroit cop in California. The PI in Tibet.
And, in this film, a con man swept up into a life of luxury. Dan Ackroyd, who is also in this film (I say that a bit facetiously–both he and Murphy star in the film and have equal billing), plays a commodities trader named Louis Winthrope who aspires to be respected by the old money men, played by Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy. They, on the other hand, don’t think much of him. And when one of them reads an article about Nature vs. Nurture, he thinks that any man in the commodity trader’s environment would thrive, and that if Winthrop were out of his environment, he would not thrive. So they make a wager on it and they turn Winthrope out and replace him with Billy Ray Valentine (Murphy), a con man arrested after bumping into Winthrop outside the club. When Winthrop and Valentine learn of the scheme, they set about to reverse their fortunes and to bankrupt the Duke boys. That is, the old money brothers, not the Dukes of Hazzard.
Maybe I just haven’t watched enough period pieces set in the 18th or 19th century or much of recent times, but something about the club and the snooty people there and the social circles and the locations smack of the 1980s. One could almost imagine Judge Smalls from Caddyshack in the film. But unlike perhaps some recent things, it does not depict commodities trading or making fortunes as evil in and of themselves. Thematically, that will change, and by 1983, probably already is.
An amusing film which stands the test of time if you’re of a certain age. Undoubtedly, younger people might find it an anachronism. But maybe not–I caught my oldest re-watching The Secret of My Success. Maybe kids these days can appreciate aspirational comedies.
Oh, and the film also had Jamie Lee Curtis as a financially savvy prostitute. But, to be honest, I’ve never found Jamie Lee Curtis all that. Maybe it’s the short haircuts. But Kristin Holby, on the other hand, plays Winthrope’s fiance who abandons him in his time of need. She, I like, although she’s made up in this film to be a caricature of a shallow society girl.
Kristin Clotilde Holby was born in Oslo, Norway, but her family emigrated to the United States when she was young. She got into fashion design, which led to modeling, and a brief filmography: she only had two film roles, this and Manhunter.
She retired in the late 1980s, and she has stayed retired and has raised a family. Perhaps even grandchildren by now, but it’s hard to think of her as anything but the quintessential 1980s beauty.
