My Review of "The Secret of My Success"

The Secret of My Success came out back in 1987 and it sure shows its age. You can tell that there would be a lot of raised eyebrows today if they read the script for this movie. Still it's always interesting to look back at some of the older titles to remember what the social norms were back in the day in contrast to what they are today.

This movie starts out with a young character named Brantley. He's the main character of the movie. After years of higher education he wants to make a name for himself. His family lives a simple country life in Kansas but he believes he can make it big in New York. It's basically a rags to riches story. Although, in this story he doesn't use any of his country wits to succeed.

He finally gets to New York all wide eyed and tons of enthusiasm. The problem is he soon discovers that it isn't as easy to make in New York as he thought. Despite the setbacks he's willing to do whatever it takes for success. During one of his calls back home to his mother, his mother gives him a contact to a distant relative that lives in New York.

Desperate to get any work in New York Brantley decides to take the opportunity to meet this distant relative. When he meets his distant uncle he soon finds out that this uncle is nothing what he had been expecting. He's pretty much a huge jerk. It's actually a surprise to Brantley that he's able to win over his jerk of an uncle and get a job in the mailroom.

Once he gets to the mailroom he learns that there are social classes within the organization. They pretty much split the groups into two categories, suits and grunts. Each of these groups aren't to congregate with one another. Brantley obviously doesn't believe in this separation and kind of uses this separation of groups to his advantage.

After learning that there's has been a huge layoff at the company, Brantley assumes the identity of one of the laid off workers. From there he studies the company and learns the ins and outs of everything. This is all while he is still assuming his mailroom duties.

There's very little talk about what Brantley's ideas are and what he's doing to fix things in the company. Expansion of the company is probably the closest we get to understanding what Brantley hopes to do with the company. Instead we usually see a bunch of montages of him talking to executives and such.

This could have been a movie altogether but there's more to this movie than that. The movie pulls the rug from us close to halfway into the movie. While Brantley is at a water fountain he encounters Christy. I can't remember ever seeing a cheesier love struck moment than this scene. It is something to be seen because I was almost laughing at how corny it was. There are a lot of corny moments throughout this movie as well but this one takes the cake.

Christy is the object of Brantley's affection but this is complicated as earlier on Brantley gets some sort of chauffeur job for his uncle's wife. He didn't know it was his uncle's wife and starts to shower her with compliments. As soon as you know it she is totally into him and she pounces at him like fresh meat.

Throughout the movie we have a ton of mistake identity gags. Brantley, his alter ego and the weird love entanglement that ensues with all of the couples involved. It sounds like it would be a mess but I have to tip my hat to the filmmakers of this movie for making it so simple to follow. The whole thing seems like it should have been made for some sort of TV sitcom instead of a full out movie. Then again maybe sitcoms took this concept from movies from the past.

As an 80's movie about excess and their office norms you will see your fair share of inappropriate behavior that would not be tolerated today. That's not to say that this stuff didn't happen in the past. It's just a little awkward for some to see that they made a comedy about this sort of thing in the 80's and it was accepted behavior.

Overall, this movie was a bit cringe worthy. I can appreciate what the movie did in terms of the identity confusion and in that sense I did like it. The amount of camp and corn kind of helped me like it more as well. I thought it was enjoyable but by no means a masterpiece. I have to give this movie a 6 out of 10. I could have sworn I've seen this movie before way back when because I started to recollect some of it as I was watching it.