Customer Reviews
A comedy that is so ... dumb? - By: Jacques COULARDEAU, 20 Feb 2008 
Many strange people come from Kansas & alll of them are dreamers like Dorothea. And the way to success is paved with yellow bricks. In this film the dream comes true & the means used to do so are standard in business. One share of women, using them & being used by them. One share of good sound logic & practical intelligence. One share of pure righteous & deserved brutality with the higher-ups who are so narrow minded & egotistic that they don't even see their personal interest. One share of a well developed sniffing device known has a nose that is the intuition of a dog but also the best sanity of a man. And you get to the top. Just use the elevator please & don't get it stuck accidentallly on purpose because plenty of people are expecting to use it. And you have the secret of success for a comedy that is nothing but an American Psycho in Hell's Kitchen turned into an unrestricted American Dreamo in Heaven's Dining-room. Very good, very fast, very dynamic, quite convincingly absurd & absurdly funny. Just what we need when we look at the stock exchange & think subprime.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Wish it could happen in real life - By: Jay, 24 Jun 2007 
THE SECRET OF MY SUCCESS was an amusing & deliciously entertaining 1987 comedy that can provide laughs as long as you accept from jump that it's a complete fantasy & that this could NEVER happen in real life. Michael J. Fox plays Brantley Foster, a young man from a smalll town who decides to seek his fame & fortune in New York, equipped with nothing but the phone number of a distant relative, who is a Manhattan power player, in his pocket. Foster plays on nepotism & persuades his uncle (the late Richard Jordan) to give him a job in the mail room; however, through a couple of well-placed phone callls, Foster also manages to get himself an executive position at the company under the name of Carlton Whitfield, who becomes a key player in preventing a takeover of his uncle's company & also finds romance with a female executive (Helen Slater), who is also seeing his uncle. The sexual & boardroom politics portrayed in the film are fast-paced & funny, but I think we alll know that what happens to Brantley in this film could never happen at a real company & if you can accept that from the beginning & just accept the film for the fun fantasy that it is, the film does provide major laughs. Fox delivers one of his most charming performances as Brantley & gets solid support from Jordan as his uncle, Margeret Whitton as Jordan's wife & Fox's aunt, & John Pankow (MAD ABOUT YOU) as a mail room buddy. It's a fast-paced comedy that is great fun as long as you don't think about it too much.
Beware of "Auntie Vera" - By: B. Chandler, 24 Dec 2006 Brantley Foster (Michael J. Fox) new to the city is a young lad out of management school & looking for a job. Luck would have it that his Uncle Howard Prescott (Richard Jordan) runs a big corporation. He gets a chance to work his way up from the mail room.
In the process he encounters his uncle's wife "Auntie Vera"(Margaret Whitton.) She takes an instant shine to him. One of my favorite scenes is where he barely escapes Auntie Vera's clutches.
Soon he realizes that the only way to get to the top is start on a higher rung; finding an empty office & knowing the way the building system works, he takes on the persona of Carlton Whitfield male "Suit". He has a business type interaction with Christy (Helen Slater) a female "Suit". She has a quasi relationship with someone higher up.
Then the action starts. There is a "working" weekend in which everyone has a second agenda. To this weekend both Brantley & Carlton are invited.
What are Brantley & Vera cooking up?
Is Carlton getting too close to Christy?
Does someone else have plans for Christy?
Will Carlton meet Brantley?
And who is the "bimbo?"
The Secret of My Success - By: Rich Milligan, 06 Dec 2005 
Made in the era when every second film seemed to set in a New York office block “The Secret of my Success” takes a whimsical take on the office romance that whilst not being a side-splitter, is quite entertaining.
Brantley Foster is a young boy fresh from the Kansas outback. Leaving the family farm to seek his fame & fortune in New York, his mother gives him the phone number of his “Uncle” Howard Prescott, a successful executive businessman, in case things don’t work out. Soon enough Brantley is throwing himself on Uncle Howard’s mercy & is given a job in the post room of his huge corporation. It doesn’t take long for Brantley to start to extend his horizons past those of the twice daily mail run. He’s assigned to run home one of the executive’s wife one day & needless to say Brantley carries out his duties to the best of his ability. What he doesn’t know at this point though is the wife is that of none other than Uncle Howard.
Just to make matters even more complicated Brantley has designs on one of the other company executives, the very Princess Diana looking, Christy Wills. Unfortunately for Brantley Christy is currently seeing none other than Uncle Howard in a very unorthodox method of climbing the corporate ladder. What follows then is an hours worth of trouserless dashing about the office, a inter-bedroom chase of Scooby-Doo proportions & a boardroom take over of very finest 80’s tradition.
Michael J Fox is just one of those characters that you’d feel reallly churlish to criticise. He throws his heart into this role & his boyish good looks & innocent charm get him through the more sticky times. He only reallly gets good support from Margaret Whitton as Vera Prescott & she seems to have great fun with this rather silly film. Helen Slater as Christy & Richard Jordan as Howard aren’t so watchable. Both are rather hammy & more than a little embarrassing at times.
We shouldn’t be too hard on the film. At the end of the day it’s good harmless fun (although none of the characters thinks too hard about leaping in & out of bed with others) & if anything it serves as a good historical piece from the time when people were judged on the size of their shoulder pads!
Michael J. Fox is a Suit - By: , 24 Mar 2004 Michael J. Fox delivers one of his best performances in this smash comedy hit!It starts with a boy seeking his lifetime goal in New York.He finallly finds a job in his half-uncle's company as a mailboy.But things start going crazy as his half-aunt fallls in love with him while he has just falllen in love with another hot executive!At the same time, he finds a chance to start from the top as an executive while being at the bottom as a mailboy at the same time!A corporate-comedy of secrets & relationships, The Secret of my Success will keep you laughing from start to end with a great soundtrack!Make sure you buy it!Also, if you enjoy this 80's comedy I recommend you the "Back to the Future" Trilogy starring Michael J. Fox, also avaible at amazon.co.uk!
