The Secret of My Success

As in Working Girl, the secret of his success is that he gives himself an unofficial promotion.  And hilarity ensues.

(One day, I promise, I will write a comedy called Hilarity Ensues.) (And also one called Suitcase Full of Money.)

Herbert Ross directed many fine character-based comedies.  And also this.

The 80s, it seems, were not good for him.  His direction here is arch, self-conscious and brittle.

Don’t get me started on the music.  Clangorous, deafening 80s arena rock by bands with names like Night Ranger and Restless Heart.  Not what you want for an office comedy, romantic comedy or farce, all of which Secret of My Success tries to take on at different points.

Michael J. Fox, bless his heart, looks all of 17, Helen Slater looks like Princess Di (in linebacker’s shoulder pads) and Richard Jordan does an uncanny (if inexplicable) impression of Willem Dafoe.

Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright and national treasure Christopher Durang logs many days as an executive with a lot of screen time but few lines.  He and David Mamet and Wallace Shawn and Sam Shepard and Harold Pinter should all do a movie together.  Actually, I guess I mean the exact opposite of that.

Mark Margolis, who made such an impression in Scarface as the Peruvian assassin with blood of icewater, here is reduced to muttering and looking hapless as an elevator maitenance man.  I guess after Al Pacino splatters your brains all over the side window of a station wagon, you take what you can get.

A young Mercedes Ruehl plays a dotty waitress.

The zany comedy drags.  Faces are pulled, doors slam, clothes come off, elevators are stopped (much to the consternation of the ex-Peruvian assassin with blood of icewater).

Usually in movies like this they put off-brand art on the walls because the originals would cost to much to procure and insure for the shoot.  I give this movie credit for having its walls festooned with genuine 80s art instead of just knockoffs, mostly bold geometric assertions by the likes of Frank Stella and Sol LeWitt.  However, I take away points for having a Josef Albers hanging sideways through the whole movie.  Sideways!  Albers must have been lying sideways in his grave.  People, people, you turn “Homage to the Square” sideways and it makes no sense at all!

Working Girl, even with its big fake Warhol, crushes this like a grape.