Trading Places (1983)

The Scene: Winthorpe is a very bad Santa

Why I Love This Scene: This comedy classic is filled to the brim with great scenes and hilarious quotes but since it’s Christmas I’m going to highlight the Aykroyd playing a drunk and disgusting Santa scenes. I miss Aykroyd. Nowadays he’s desperately trying to get a Ghostbusters movie made, sell his vodka and talk about extra-terrestrials rather than get back on top with his odd-ball and eccentric brand of comedy. I always loved his versatility with playing rich snobs, scientists or whatever Bobo was in Nothing But Trouble. Quick-talking and wacky he always was one of the better comedy personas of the late 70s to the 90s. But put him together with another great comedian and he was phenomenal as the perfect foil. Like John Candy in The Great Outdoors, Chevy Chase in Spies Like Us, Bill Murray in Ghostbusters, John Belushi in Blues Brothers and even Tom Hanks in Dragnet. And in every movie he was always managed to be hilarious at the same time sharing the screen with those comedy heavyweights. He was basically the straight-man compared to those other comedians but was funny himself in his own right. John Landis’ Trading Places with Eddie Murphy is no exception. Hopefully he’ll return to comedy acting again because he was one of the smartest and funniest that there ever was. Here he’ll equally make you laugh and disgusted when he eats a smoked salmon with dirty fake Santa beard.