{"id":19491,"date":"2012-05-31T00:01:06","date_gmt":"2012-05-30T14:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/?p=19491"},"modified":"2018-03-15T22:16:54","modified_gmt":"2018-03-15T11:46:54","slug":"movie-review-the-secret-of-my-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/2012\/05\/31\/movie-review-the-secret-of-my-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Movie Review – Secret Of My Success, The"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The-Secret-Of-My-Success-Review-Logo-v5.1\"<\/h2>\n
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– Summary –<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Director :<\/strong>\u00a0 Herbert Ross
\nYear Of Release :<\/strong>\u00a0 1987
\nPrincipal Cast :<\/strong>\u00a0 Michael J Fox, Helen Slater, Margaret Whitton, Richard Jordan, John Pankow, Mercedes Ruehl.
\nApprox Running Time :<\/strong>\u00a0 90 Minutes
\nSynopsis:<\/strong> Young up-and-coming financial whizz-kid inadvertently scams his way into a senior executive position at his uncles company, although he’s only been employed as a mail-room clerk. Leading a double life in order to get ahead, things take a turn for the worse when he falls for the bosses mistress, and his wife falls for him.
\nWhat we think :<\/strong>\u00a0 Typically fast-paced 80’s comedy starring a very young Michael J Fox, The Secret of My Success<\/em> relies almost too heavily on the charm of its leading man, and not enough on the supporting cast. It’s entertaining, if somewhat dated by current standards, although as a curiosity and an examination of Fox’s career, you wont find many funnier.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ahh, the 80\u2019s. The decade of decadence \u2013 at least, that\u2019s how I saw it, where business was booming and businessmen were the epitome of cool. Not so? Just look at films like Wall Street, as an example, where the financial sector was the focus of what it meant to be \u201csuccessful\u201d. Michael J Fox\u2019s post-Back To The Future<\/em> project, The Secret Of My Success<\/em>, capitalized on that genre of film, by making Fox\u2019s Family Ties<\/em> Alex Keaton move to New York and sneak his way up the corporate ladder. Okay, so Alex Keaton doesn\u2019t exist in this<\/em> film, but the character here is almost<\/em> an exact carbon copy of that<\/em> sitcom icon, so close in ego and drive to succeed is he. While the film\u2019s somewhat desperate farcical elements contradict the more serene romantic elements, or even the blustering boardroom antics, Success<\/em> has a number of things working in its favour \u2013 not the least of which is Fox himself. Still, some two and a half decades after it came out, does the film still have something pertinent to say about our rampant capitalist ideology?<\/p>\n

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It doesn’t start that great, but the ending is awesome!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Brantley Foster (Michael J Fox) has just graduated from business college in Kansas, and moves to New York for work \u2013 only to discover that his new job no longer exists, since the company just went under. Desperate not to have to return to Kansas, Foster gets work in the mail-room of his Uncle Howard\u2019s company, Pemrose Incorporated. This wasn\u2019t the kind of work Foster trained for, so he surreptitiously uses a corner office to climb the corporate ladder as Carlton Whitfield, gleaning information about the company through his connections in the mail room. As Carlton, he romances fellow \u201csuit\u201d Christy Willis (Helen Slater), and is preyed upon by Howard\u2019s wife Vera (Brantley\u2019s Aunt by marriage) \u2013 a man-eating nymphomaniac who just happens to own the company Howard\u2019s running. As he leads a double life as Carlton, Brantley befriends a number of Wall Street heavyweights who can help him become the success he so desperately craves, but his deceptions may lead the love of his life to leave him forever.<\/p>\n

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Do you know the way to San Jose?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Part sex romp, part romantic comedy, part financial gobbledegook, The Secret Of My Success<\/em> is an uneven attempt to capitalize on the start status of 80\u2019s uber-teen Michael J Fox, who looks for all the world like he was about 17 when he made this – he wasn\u2019t, he was 25. The 80\u2019s, when greed was good<\/em>, feels like quicksilver in this film, which melds about three genres of film into one and comes up with a fairly funny, somewhat dated and always Fox-driven piece about losing oneself at the expense of ones dreams. It\u2019s not the raucous adult-style humor we\u2019ve come to know and love these days; The Secret Of My Success<\/em> pre-dates The Hangover<\/em> and American Pie<\/em> by about 10 years at least<\/em>, so the humor is derived less from the sexually aggressive Aunt Vera character and more from the reaction of Fox\u2019s Bradley Foster. Fox does his now-familiar \u201cbreathless enthusiasm\u201d character once more, much like he did in Back To The Future, Doc Hollywood<\/em>, and even Teen Wolf<\/em>, \u00a0moving through this film like a supercharged jackrabbit; Fox looks perennially startled in his early films, and Success<\/em> is no different.<\/p>\n

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Don’t look at me like that.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The uneven tone of the film, in which the central character must engage in farcical sex-romp comedy with Aunt Vera, climb the ladder of finance with a canny understanding beyond his years, and lust after the seemingly unattainable hot-goddess from the top floor, is about the only real negative for the whole film: the characters aren\u2019t exactly steeped in realism, so you can forget about this being in any way believable, and the story relies less on dialogue and more on the slapstick-esque nature of Fox to generate real laughs. It plays as a comedy, but director Herbert Ross, best known for films like Footloose, Steel Magnolias<\/em> and Boys On The Side<\/em>, tries to get more out of it than the script, by Jim Cash, will allow. Is this film meant as an indictment on the corruptibility of the elite businessman? Is it a statement on just how shallow we all are for wanting to be wealthy and seeing wealth as a measure of \u201csuccess\u201d? Or are we meant to take this film exactly as it seems: as a bumbling comedy about a kid wanting to impress a girl and leading two lives in order to do so? Whichever the case may be, Success<\/em> is still eminently watchable, especially for the chemistry between Fox and his sultry co-star Margaret Whitton as Aunt Vera.<\/p>\n

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Nice suspenders, future boy!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The film\u2019s cast are all given fairly generic roles to play; generic by 1980\u2019s standards, at least. Helen Slater seems somewhat out of place and completely out of her depth as the canny businesswoman whom Fox falls for \u2013 she\u2019s gorgeous, sure, but comes across a lot like Rosie Huntington-Whiteley did in the last Transformers<\/em> movie. Eye candy, and not much else. Richard Jordan skirts the implausible as the Pemrose CEO, Howard Prescott, on the one hand running a multi-million dollar company like a Nazi death-camp and on the other, unaware that his wife is shagging all the young meat she can get her claws into. The fact that he\u2019s having an affair with Christy as well (something Brantley\u2019s unaware of) seems somewhat creepy considering the age gap, although maybe this was the norm back in the 80\u2019s? John Pankow does well as the cynically self-aware Fred, who works with Brantley in the mail room, and is this film\u2019s \u201ceveryman\u201d character moreso than even Fox\u2019s. Sharp eyed viewers will also spot US Stage and screen legend Elizabeth Franz as Brantley\u2019s mother, Mercedes Ruehl as a waitress, and Herman Munster himself \u2013 Fred Gwynne \u2013 as a competing CEO looking to take over Pemrose.<\/p>\n

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You know, I think this hairstyle will be around forever!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

80\u2019s comedies don\u2019t get much more friendly than this \u2013 Fox is a likeable lead, and Helen Slater is always a joy to cast your eyes upon; the film does feel a little too forced at times, which does come out in the more intimate sequences, but generally it\u2019s a pleasing, self-effacing romp that\u2019ll have you guffawing at the ludicrousness of it all each time.<\/p>\n

\"7-Star\"<\/p>\n

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