The Secret of My Success (1987)

"I'm sorry, Mr. Foster. We need someone with experience."

Director
Herbert Ross

Cast
Michael J. Fox - Brantley Foster
Helen Slater - Christy Wills
Richard Jordan - Howard Prescott
Margaret Whitton - Vera Pemrose Prescott
John Pankow - Fred Melrose
Fred Gwynne - Donald Davenport
Gerry Bamman - Art Thomas
Carol Ann Susi - Jean
Drew Snyder - Burt Foster
Elizabeth Franz - Grace Foster

Michael J. Fox's 1987 not-Back to the Future movie, "The Secret of My Success," is a film I'd never seen before. I only watched it because my wife and I have a movie night together a couple of times a month. We searched the long and seemingly endless corridors of streaming services, as we often do, looking for something we either haven't seen before or that at least one of us hasn't seen in years.

So, on our last movie night, I picked this flick completely out of curiosoity as it has Michael J. Fox alongside Helen Slater. 

I wanted to like this movie. I wanted to. It's a movie about intelligence, determination, working for something, and the American dream. I'm all for that!

The part that I hated was how empty it unintentionally makes it all seem. 

The story follows Brantley Foster (Michael J. Fox), fresh out of college. He moves out of his parents' house on the Kansas farm to find a successful career in finance in New York City. 

Of course, finding that dream job is met with a lot of companies turning him down for lack of experience. However, before leaving Kansas, his mom gives him the name of his uncle, Howard Prescott (Richard Jordan), whom Brantley has never met. So, in dire need of employment after being turned down multiple times at interviews, Brantley pays his uncle a visit at his huge office building.

After some begging, Howard hires Brantley to work in his company's mailroom.

In no time after starting his new job, Brantley starts deceiving the corporate higher-ups in an attempt to work his way up the corporate ladder undetected. 

He juggles this deception with inserting himself in the middle of office politics, business rivalries, and a budding office romance with Christy Wills (Helen Slater), who is a financial genius just like he is. But as she's so well established in the upper ranks of the company, Brantley finds out his uncle has put her close to himself for a specific reason.

So, Brantley has to keep this daily charade going, meandering under the pseudonym Carlton Whitfield so his uncle/boss doesn't catch on. Brantley just needs to weasel his way upwards and implant himself into a permanent, well-paying, upper-level position. And, as expected, comedy ensues.

Fox's comedic performance is entertaining and hilarious. He gives his character charisma, which makes him likable even though he's really a big liar. He's not just telling white lies. These lies are big friggin' lies with bells and noise makers hanging off them. I think the audience is expected to overlook Brantley's serious flaws because he's young, charming, inexperienced (albeit book-smart), and energetic. That's Michael J. Fox for you. His reactions go from being skittish and apprehensive to simply going along with whatever mishap falls in his way so long as he reaches his goal. It's a bit reminiscent of his character Alex Keaton from the sitcom Family Ties. So, I see why he would be cast as a young, fearless, ambitious financial know-it-all.

It's an underrated performance, but I understand why that is. The movie crumbles all around Fox.

His role, and the story in general, is a comedic take on the American dream. And within this particular dream is the contrast between hard work and manipulating the system.

Underneath all this white-collar "success" is nothing but crap: adultery, deceit, empty and unfulfilling materialism, and the sad, stupid justification that a person has to do whatever they've got to do to make it in the business world. It all seems empty.

I admire the hard work and determination Brantley undergoes, albeit comedically, to bypass the standard "experience needed" job requirement, which those just-out-of-college jobseekers have to work around any way they can to get through the front doors of the working world. But his success his all founded on unsavory tactics sprinkled with comedy to make it look appealing.

The movie is definitely a product of its day. The 1980s was a decade where financial success seemed within reach. The economic uncertainty of the 1970s morphed into an optimistic period thanks to market expansion. This was the Reagan era. People wanted the big offices. Women also wore big hairdos with lots of Aqua-Net. Ambition was high.

If Gen Z could only understand the satisfaction and payoff of hard work and dedication. They have a habit of recording themselves crying (literally) at the prospect of working and needing to make sacrifices in order to support themselves and earn a living. "Soft" isn't a big enough word. But I digress.

So, in the most general way I admire Fox's character's determination to really make something of himself despite the stumbling blocks that fall in his way. No excuses. Eye on the prize!

However, the success Brantley achieves seems empty and not very glorious despite the glitter. It's satisfying seeing him win while the greedy corporate suits are knocked down several pegs and get a taste of humble pie. What will he do with it once he gets his financial success? Will it improve him in any way? It doesn't appear like it will. 

Of course, Brantley wins the love and affection of Christy. Even that romance begins with lies and other unsavory ways.

The chemistry between Michael J. Fox and Helen Slater isn't there. It's more awkward than charming. Together, they look like a teenager and a mature career woman who has seen more things than a respectable lady should hooking up. It felt very forced. It didn't work.

Michael J. Fox and Helen Slater prove that

charisma isn't always transferable.

This came out in 1987, and back then—a much less noble characteristic of the '80s—was the idea that a meaningful relationship starts with sex sooner rather than later. And this is supposed to be admired and applauded.

I walked into this movie having only heard of it, but I didn't look into it beforehand to see what I'd be getting myself into.

I'm not bashing the pursuit of success, nor the attainment of it. I respect anyone who works hard and reaps the rewards of that hard work, even if they become millionaires, billionaires, or now that it's apparently obtainable trillionaires.

The corporate white-collar world is a world that has replaced the soul with just about anything else.

So, the movie's depicted definition of success seems souless.

By the third act, the movie desperately tries to get the audience to laugh, but the comedy has dried up by the third act. So, the movie resorts to slapstick-style humor to get laughs. All I could think about at that point was how much the third act dragged on. Nothing about this flick feels original. Rather, it feels more like a plot written thirty years earlier and then rehashed with a style and tone suitable for the decade.

"The Secret of My Success" has a good portion of entertaining comedic moments. It's also interesting to watch this right now as a photographic look at what corporate America was like back in the 1980s. It's also satirical of corporate America at the time.

Despite Michael J. Fox's more-or-less enjoyable and funny performance, it's rather harsh for a movie to ask audiences to like a character who goes from boyish and ambitious to depending on lies and deceit to succeed. Brantley comes from a Midwestern, probably Christian, background, too. It's not stated as such, but it can easily be interpreted that way since his farming parents aren't terribly excited to see him scurry off the farm and head to New York City in order to find ultimate success in the financial world. And this is what he so quickly resorts to. 

I can't say I'd recommend "The Secret of My Success." Again, I wanted to like it. In the end, the movie's definition of success felt dishonest, icky, and superficial. It also ran out of jokes! What kind of comedy runs out of jokes? 

All in all, this flick is anything but successful.