Trading Places appears in an aspect ratio of approximately 1.85:1 on this 4K UHD Disc. This turned into an appealing presentation.
Sharpness seemed mostly strong. A few slightly soft shots appeared, but most of the flick looked pretty tight.
Jagged edges and moiré effects created no concerns, and I saw no edge haloes. With a good layer of grain, noise reduction didn’t become an issue, and print flaws remained absent.
As I alluded, most Eighties comedies showed flat colors, but that didn’t occur during Places. The movie featured a naturalistic palette, and the disc replicated those hues with surprising fidelity. The tones came across as nicely bright and vivid, and they always looked tight and rich.
Black levels also seemed deep and dense, while shadow detail usually appeared appropriately opaque. However, as with many movies that mix white and black actors, the dark-skinned performers often get the short shrift, so some low-light situations that involve them appeared a bit too thick. Nonetheless, this looked like a solid transfer overall.
I also found a pleasant surprise when I listened to the Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack of Trading Places. While the soundfield didn’t provide a slam-bang experience, it opened up the spectrum pretty nicely.
The forward domain showed very good stereo imaging for the music, and it also spread ambient effects well. The material created a decent sense of atmosphere, and elements moved cleanly across the domain.
The rear speakers added a fine general sense of setting, and I even heard some split-surround information. Some of those moments worked well - such as when vehicles traveled from rear to front - but a few came across as artificial.
For example, during the scene in which the cops uncovered Valentine’s fraud, I heard some odd blips from the rear speakers; it sounded like those were meant to provide a sense of atmosphere, but they didn’t make much sense. Nonetheless, the soundfield usually worked well.
Audio quality also seemed pretty impressive for the most part. Dialogue generally sounded natural and warm. I noticed a few examples of a little edginess, but those occasions occurred infrequently, and I discerned no issues related to intelligibility.
Effects appeared clean and accurate. They played a fairly small role in this comedy, but they came across as well defined and showed no issues related to distortion.
I felt most impressed with the reproduction of the score. The music seemed wonderfully bright and vivid, and it also demonstrated excellent dynamics considering the age of the material.
Even the dance tunes heard during Valentine’s party appeared vibrant and lively, and the bass seemed deep and tight. Overall, the audio of Trading Places lacked the ambition to merit “A”-level consideration, but I still felt impressed with the film’s surprisingly involving soundtrack.
How did this 2020 “Paramount Presents” Blu-ray compare to the 2018 “35th Anniversary” BD? The lossless audio seemed livelier and richer than the old lossy mix.
Visuals demonstrated a nice upgrade, as the 2020 disc lost the noise reduction, print flaws and edge haloes of its predecessor. The 2020 presentation felt more natural and film-like, so it became a nice step up in quality.
Note that the 2018 Blu-ray literally duplicated the original BD from 2008. This makes the 2020 “Paramount Presents” edition the first remaster of the film in years.
Most of the old extras repeat here, and Insider Trading: The Making of Trading Places lasts 18 minutes, 28 seconds as we hear from director John Landis, screenwriters Herschel Weingrod and Tim Harris, executive producer George Folsey, Jr., and actors Dan Aykroyd, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Eddie Murphy.
The show looks at the project’s origins, story and script, casting and performances, some favorite scenes and memories of the shoot. Don’t expect a very detailed look at the film’s creation from “Insider”, as it stays pretty superficial and anecdotes.
Nonetheless, it throws out some good notes and entertains along the way. We get a reasonable amount of new material in this enjoyable show.
For the seven-minute, 58-second Trading Stories, we get comments from Landis, Curtis, Murphy, and Aykroyd. Taken from 1983 sessions to publicize the movie, they discuss aspects of their careers and a little about the flick. These prove surprisingly interesting, as they offer a nice contrast to the more modern interviews.
One Deleted Scene fills three minutes, eight seconds. It shows us how Beeks steals the crop report. While that makes it a decent piece of plot exposition, the sequence itself is way too long and slow to make sense in the film.
We can view it with or without commentary from Folsey. He explains where it would’ve gone in the movie and why it got cut. Folsey’s remarks are useful, though he seems to think it’s a good scene, and I don’t agree with that.
Dressing the Part goes for six minutes, 30 seconds, and features Landis, Aykroyd, Curtis and costume designer Deborah Nadoolman. We get notes about the clothes used in the movie and the purposes the served in the flick. This offers a quick but informative glimpse into the thoughts behind the costumes.
During the five-minute, 25-second The Trade in Trading Places, we locate remarks from Weingrod, Landis, New York Board of Trade vice chairman Roger Corrado, proprietary trader Bret Williams, and New York Mercantile Exchange chairman Richard Schaeffer.
They discuss the business elements of the movie and tell us how these factors work in real life. “Trade” offers a nice primer on the business aspects in the story.
In addition to the film’s trailer, we find an Industry Promotional Piece. It lasts four minutes, 18 seconds as it shows a promo created to tout the film at an exhibitor’s convention. We see Murphy and Aykroyd improvise a bit to sell the flick. It’s amusing and this is a cool extra.
New to the 2020 Blu-ray, Filmmaker Focus runs eight minutes, 46 seconds and provides more notes from Landis. He talks about what brought him to the film, cast and performances, a few scene specifics and the movie’s completion.
After the other programs, “Focus” can feel a little redundant at times. Still, it brings a decent overview of some production areas.
Also new to the 2020 disc, we find an Isolated Score Track. This presents the movie’s music via a Dolby Stereo presentation. It’s too bad the audio isn’t lossless, but this still becomes a nice bonus.
Unfortunately, the 2020 release drops a subtitle trivia track from the prior Blu-ray. That text commentary offered nice insights and it should’ve appeared here as well.
Many decades after its initial release, Trading Places remains a reasonably charming and amusing piece of work. While the flick doesn’t excel at much, it maintains a nice sense of lightness and humor that allows it to succeed. The Blu-ray brings us very good picture and audio as well as some largely interesting supplements. The 2020 version offers the best rendition of the film to date and it upgrades its predecessors.
To rate this film visit the original review of TRADING PLACES