My review was written in March 1990 after watching the movie on MCEG/Virgin video cassette.
"Limit Up" is a lame fantasy comedy about the Chicago world of commodity trading. It played theatrically in the Windy City last November ahead of its May video debut.
MCEG production poses the uninteresting question: can Nancy Allen corner the world market in soybeans? She's an upwardly mobile runner on the exchange who wants to be a trader but gets a sexist brushoff from her icy boss, Dean Stockwell. Dumb gimmick has Danitra Vance as an agent for the devil offering Allen a Faustian deal to sell her soul for fame and wealth in the commodities biz.
With cheap special effects and predictable plot twists, the film has little to offer in the "Wall Street" genre. Instead of trenchant social criticism, director Richard Martini veers into goody-goody realms (manipulating the price of soybeans to benefit starving Third World countries) that don't ring true.
Casting Ray Charles as God, in the form on Earth of a jazz sax player, does not measure up to George Burns' assignments in the role. Vance is outfitted and instructed to act in obvious imitation of Whoopi Goldberg, to ill effect.
Allen and Stockwell are straitjacketed in stock roles. Co-author Luana Anders, familiar from many acting roles in the '60s, also pops up on screen as an instructor for traders.
"Limit Up" is a lame fantasy comedy about the Chicago world of commodity trading. It played theatrically in the Windy City last November ahead of its May video debut.
MCEG production poses the uninteresting question: can Nancy Allen corner the world market in soybeans? She's an upwardly mobile runner on the exchange who wants to be a trader but gets a sexist brushoff from her icy boss, Dean Stockwell. Dumb gimmick has Danitra Vance as an agent for the devil offering Allen a Faustian deal to sell her soul for fame and wealth in the commodities biz.
With cheap special effects and predictable plot twists, the film has little to offer in the "Wall Street" genre. Instead of trenchant social criticism, director Richard Martini veers into goody-goody realms (manipulating the price of soybeans to benefit starving Third World countries) that don't ring true.
Casting Ray Charles as God, in the form on Earth of a jazz sax player, does not measure up to George Burns' assignments in the role. Vance is outfitted and instructed to act in obvious imitation of Whoopi Goldberg, to ill effect.
Allen and Stockwell are straitjacketed in stock roles. Co-author Luana Anders, familiar from many acting roles in the '60s, also pops up on screen as an instructor for traders.