The Secret: Dare to Dream (2020)

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐  

A lot of people may be surprised by my generous rating for this movie which has generally been panned by most critics and many viewers. They probably would have the conclusion that I must be a staunch Law of Attraction believer, which I have to put it across clearly here that I am not. When I walk into a movie like this I would already have some level of expectations and hence would not be expecting an Oscar worthy piece of art. This film I would say, fall under the same category as those Christian themed movies which means we should expect some level of "preaching" of the beliefs in which the source material the film is based on, in this case the mega best selling self help book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. That novel was a world wide phenomenon when it was first published in 2006. Admittedly since then, the feverish cult like following has long died down although the novel itself remains one of the most popular book on self help with its promotion of positive thinking.

I am all for anything that promotes positivity in our current world where so much negativity prevails. The book's learnings are subtly present in the context of this film which plays predominantly as a simple love story. Skeptics will laugh and ridicule the way some incidents happen in the story that implies you can get what you wish for by simply thinking it and wishing real hard for it to come true. However, I think that's to be expected since that is basically what The Secret suggests. What I took away from the film was its simple and beautiful love story and how everything worked out at the end for everyone. It delivers such a wonderful positive message and promotes the idea of positive thinking and how that can help you be a happier person. I did not find it preachy at all. I thought that the main leads Katie Holmes and Josh Lucas did a good job in portraying the couple and that their low key performance add some level of believability to something that would on face value be quite the opposite.

This movie seems to be strangely 14 years late as I think the majority of people have moved on and the concept of the Law of Attraction is no longer as, er ... attractive. As such, I think it has an uphill task to get any serious notice and is destined to be panned and ridiculed by most people, with the exception of a small minority like yours truly.