Limit Up

Film is a sweet retelling of a stale tale: selling your soul to the devil.. in this case, it's Nancy Allen selling her soul so she can be a successful soybean trader at the Chicago Board of Trade. Cameo by Ray Charles as God is great, and Danitra Vance (from Broadway, since passed away) is terrific as his assistant Nike. Look for great perfs from Dean Stockwell as the nasty boss, and Brad Hall as the quirky boyfriend. Also gives an insiders view of commodity trading. Sort of Wall Street meets Bedazzled.

I wanted to like this movie, but it's rather dull. I'm sure it looked better on paper. The environment of a commodities trading floor just isn't exciting enough to hold my attention...for one thing, I don't understand it. The screenwriters foresaw this problem...and included lots of scenes explaining the soybean trade to me. I became less enthused with each passing minute. The stars, Nancy Allen and Brad Hall, just aren't charismatic enough to carry a film. The girl who plays the Devil in Disguise (Donitra Vance) tries her damnest to liven up the proceedings...but merely becomes annoying. This would have been a much better movie if Dean Stockwell and his beautiful, cunning accomplice were the major stars...instead, they do their best with supporting parts. Only there's nothing here to support.

I had the relative misfortune of catching this film one day when I was home with the 'flu. It is virtually devoid of any substance, plot-wise. It's not offensive, just a mind numbingly silly film that seems to utilize every trick of the trade from the 'school of bad 1980's movies'. The only highlight (if you could call it that) was a cameo by musician Ray Charles (and one has to wonder what he's doing in a film such as this.) Avoid at all costs, unless, of course, you are a Ray Charles fan or suffer from chronic insomnia. Half a star out of five.

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.

I got a chance to catch this film recently after all these years. Ray Charles plays God! Hilarious. Nancy Allen in a role that would have been great for Sharon Stone. Danitra Vance is hilarious doing her own comic twist - I saw her on Broadway some years ago, before she passed away - and comic Brad Hall from Sat. Night Live does a cool comic turn as the goofy boyfriend. Good wins over evil, and Ray Charles rules the day once again. In a nutshell, this soybean trading floor runner meets up with her guardian angel (which she thinks is the devil - it can't be a spoiler if the movie is this old) who tries to get her to corner the soybean market. Why would anyone care if the soybean market is cornered? Turns out that soybeans run the world, or so it's told in this fairy tale. I don't know, maybe I'm just not as jaded as I should be, but I loved seeing the soybean traders screaming bloody murder over their daily cash, and Ray Charles doing comedy. I wish this film would come out on DVD.