Candy Cane Lane (2023) is a holiday movie starring Eddie Murphy. That’s how it was conceived, that’s how it’s been executed, and that’s what it is, a Holiday Movie. Trading Places (1983) was not conceived as a holiday movie, nor executed as one, but that’s what it is, a Holiday Movie, and not just because Eddie Murphy dresses up as Santa Claus in it. It really is a holiday movie in the etymological sense of holiday as holy day, hāligdæg from Old English.
Candy Cane Lane is routine, flashy, cute, a family film, and yes, it IS Eddie Murphy, with the smile. Lots of good cheer. Trading Places is something else, it’s a comic masterpiece bordering on the profound. I watched Trading Places (in the theater) when it came out, and several times since. I’ve been thoroughly and deeply delighted each time. I watched Candy Cane Lane because, well, I wanted to watch something, but I’d just been through Maestro twice and the latest installments of Reacher, didn’t want to watch Holiday Inn again (though maybe I will now), and wanted to watch something, well, to be honest, something light and fluffy. And that’s what I got, light and fluffy.
The premise is simple. Eddie Murphy lives on Candy Cane Lane and has just put-up elaborate Christmas decorations, hand-carved, because that’s who he is Chris Carver. Everyone on Candy Cane Lane does elaborate decorations and this year they’re competing for $100,000. Chris Carver has just been fired, downer, and now needs some money. So the family goes all out to win the competition, as a family. In the middle of this we have Pepper, the mysterious elf impresario of a mysterious Christmas ornaments pop-up store. Chris buys some spectacular ornaments from this store, which is not what it seems, and that long receipt he had to sign when he coughed up his credit card? he shoulda’ read the fine print. Pepper isn’t exactly the Devil, but that’s the role she plays in this film.
I won’t spoil the film by telling you how it ends because, frankly, I can’t. I haven’t watched it through to the end. But I know how it ends, not the details (who the hell cares about them in this kind of film?), and so do you. It’s an Eddie Murphy good vibes Christmas film.
Trading Places is something else. Eddie Murphy is pretending to be a legless veteran, which he’s not, but he is down and out and begging. He comes to the attention of two rich brothers, Randolph and Mortimer Duke, who own a commodities brokerage. They get an idea. They have this running bet, nature or nurture, and decided to use Billy Ray Valentine (Murphy) in an “experiment” where they pull a bunch of strings to switch him with their managing director, Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd). So, now Murphy is rich, living high, and running a brokerage while Aykroyd is poor, his fiancée has rejected him, and he’s busted. Fortunately Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis), a good-hearted prostitute, takes pity on Winthorpe and takes him home with her. Nature (the color of their skin) or nurture (their environmental circumstances)? Well, this that and the other, it’s complicated, but it all works out in the end and a good time was had by all, except those two brothers, who lose their shirts.
What have we got here? Status reversal, low to high and high to low, that’s a standard ritual motif all over the world. And we can think of the Mortimer brothers as the Devil urging God to put poor Job (played by Winthorpe) to the test. And, since we’ve gone this far, we might as well cast Valentine (that is, Murphy) as a Christ figure. So, Valentine and Winthorp get resurrected at the end while the Mortimers get cast out (Girardian sacrifice). It all works, sorta’. It doesn’t have to be exact. These things just have to be in the mix. Mixed they are, to perfection.
Happy Holiday!
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