The Secret to My Success (1987)

Summary
Michael J. Fox returns to his boy’s medium Ralph Laurens and plays the role of Brantley Foster, a 25 year old mail boy with aeronautical dreams of parlaying an MBA from Kansas into an upper executive role at a Fortune 500 multinational. Foster reaches his goal by posing as an idealistic new executive with yet another ridiculous frat-kid name: Carlton Whitfield. Helen Slater co-stars as Christy Wills, a ball-busting glass ceiling breaker who’s jockeying the grease off of her boss and CEO, but falls in love with Whittfield’s date-rapist persistence and marketing Performa graphs.

Cast
Capitalizing on his steamrolling popularity from days as Mallory’s exaggeratedly conservative younger brother, Alex P. Keaton, Fox chokes out this fluffer after starring in ass-to-ass mega-boners: Back to the Future and Teen Wolf; controversial films dealing with such topics as oedipal incest and bestiality, respectively. Despite a gross intake of $66 mil, Fox’s sheen baby face and Napoleonic stature, slots this film in a category along side the likes of Little Big League and Doogie Houser M.D., of outrageous child-in-power scenario-based entertainment.

Helen Slater offers up her dark eyebrows and blond hair in role really more suited for a circus dwarf, as despite sky camera angles and Fox’s man-heels, Slater towers indecently above him throughout their romantic interchange. You may rememberr her title role portrayal in the 1984 box-office destroyer, Supergirl, or perhaps a more recent portrayal of Elaine Tallidise in episode 13 of NBC’s epic hit series, Crossing Jordan (a show we’ve never seen, but can only assume details a young Israeli’s travels from Amman to Tafilahm, set against the backdrop of the 1993 NBA Finals).

Basic Film Recipe
5 minutes of fragmented dialogue (from either poor editing or poor script). Toss in a 14 minute lead character-profile improving montage. Repeat until nausea or credits.

Verdict
Siphoning any real character empathy or development, this film’s score and cinematography are to blame for mugging viewers of the emotional recognition needed to pull portions of this motion picture out of cheese and into the realm of quirky. Offering minor laughs and even less reason to think, TSTMS happily flounders through a sensationalist’s plot line enveloping office stratification and awkward romantic webs in a strong-armed effort at simply bulldozing believability.

The Lords give The Secret of My Success 3 adult smalls out of 5.This is the first of possibly many pointless critical reviews of obscure 80s films.