Synopsis
Brantley Foster, a well-educated kid from Kansas, has always dreamed of making it big in New York, but once in New York, he learns that jobs - and girls - are hard to get. When Brantley visits his uncle, Howard Prescott, who runs a multi-million-dollar company, he is given a job in the company's mail room.
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Cast
- Michael J. FoxBrantley Foster aka Carlton Whitfield
- Helen SlaterChristy Wills
- Richard JordanHoward Prescott
- Margaret WhittonVera Prescott
- John PankowFred Melrose
- Christopher MurneyBarney Rattigan
- Gerry BammanArt Thomas
- Fred GwynneDonald Davenport
- Carol Ann SusiJean
- Elizabeth FranzGrace Foster
Recommendations
- 60
Empire
Typically paper thin, the plot and the morality are blown away by the charms of the leading man and a soundtrack that has been hand-picked to get an audience on side. Unadulterated silliness, but harmless fun. - 60
The New York Times
When eventually, as it must, the story makes its demands on the characters, things slow down considerably. However, The Secret of My Success still leaves you with a good feeling about the idiocies of Big Business. - 60
Washington Post
Obviously, no new ground is being broken here, but director Ross keeps things humming in an endearingly old-fashioned way. As for Fox, it's not easy to believe he's a college grad -- but otherwise he's his usual genial, charming self in a role that requires no more than geniality and charm. (It is funny, of course, to see him try and sweep the taller Slater onto her feet in various love scenes.) - 40
The Dissolve
The profound moral and spiritual emptiness at the core of The Secret Of My Success keeps it from being the dumb fun promised by its premise, title, and extensive use of Yello. The film never bothers to consider why Fox is in such a huge hurry to make it in business, or why the audience should be so invested in his professional success. Instead, it just assumes that everyone is out to make their fortune, get the girl, and come out on top at the end. The film consequently feels like a souped-up Rube Goldberg contraption in a furious hurry to get nowhere in particular. - 40
Time Out London
As the action shifts from boardroom to bedroom, the film degenerates into a silly bed-hopping farce, and the corporate back-stabbing gets filed away until the final reel, when the whole thing is resolved by a wave of the wicked wife's magic wand. The same old capitalist fairytale, in other words. - 40
Washington Post
This belabored charade of mistaken identities is guided by Herbert Ross, who has directed everything from The Sunshine Boys to Footloose. Apparently, he's decided to cater to younger moviegoers with this discordant mix of MTV imagery and classic farce. - 38
Chicago Sun-Times
The Secret of My Success seems trapped in some kind of time warp, as if the screenplay had been in a drawer since the 1950s and nobody bothered to update it. - 25
Chicago Tribune
A major disappointment. Michael J. Fox stars in his first bad film as a yuppie from Kansas bent on making it in the New York business world. What's so annoying about the film is that Fox, who has radiated intelligence with his other movies, comes across here as a selfish, smug, amoral glutton who wants to rise to the top of a corporation without regard to what the company does or how he does it. [08 May 1987, p.7F]
