[2] Brantley Foster is a recent graduate of Kansas State University who moves to New York City, where he has accepted an entry-level job as a financier.

Brantley ends up working in the mailroom of the Pemrose Corporation, directed by his "uncle" Howard Prescott, a distant relative he's never met.

After inspecting company reports, Brantley realizes that Howard and most of his fellow "suits" (executives) are making pointless or damaging decisions.

While handling two jobs (switching between casual apparel and business suits in the elevator), Brantley sparks romantic interest from Christy Wills, a fellow financial wizard who recently graduated from Harvard.

Vera, already hating Howard for his inept business practices which were driving her father's empire into the ground, tells the board about his affair with Christy.

While security guards escort Howard and Art from the Pemrose Building, Brantley and Christy start planning their future together, personal as well as professional.

The popular songs "Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina & The Waves and "Oh Yeah" by Yello are heard in the film but do not appear on the soundtrack.

Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "The Secret of My Success seems trapped in some kind of time warp, as if the screenplay had been in a drawer since the 1950s and nobody bothered to update it."

It could not have been much fun for him to follow the movie's arbitrary shifts of mood, from sitcom to slapstick, from sex farce to boardroom brawls.

"[7] However, Vincent Canby, writing in The New York Times, felt it was "close to inspired when the ambitious Brantley finds himself leading two lives", although he noted that "Hanging over The Secret of My Success is the long shadow of Frank Loesser's classic musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Fox gives The Secret of My Success all the madcap energy he can muster, but it isn't enough to overcome confused direction and a recycled plot.

"[9] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 36 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.

[15] In 2020, a musical based on the film was mid-run for its world premiere and pre-Broadway tryout at the Paramount Theatre in March 2020 with Sydney Morton (Christy Lockhart) and Billy Harrigan Tighe (Brantley Foster/Carlton Whitfield) as leads and Greenberg directing when production was shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic.