{"id":47321,"date":"2020-10-05T16:53:31","date_gmt":"2020-10-05T20:53:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=47321"},"modified":"2020-10-05T16:53:44","modified_gmt":"2020-10-05T20:53:44","slug":"the-secret-dare-to-dream-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2020\/10\/the-secret-dare-to-dream-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The Secret: Dare to Dream \u2013 Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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            \u201cThe Secret: Dare to Dream\u201d has lingered in prime real estate at the top of my On Demand system\u2019s Movies section for over two months now. Other movies have come and gone, but apparently this one remains popular. I know the book \u201cThe Secret\u201d was popular about ten years ago, but I thought its heyday was long over. I guess the people behind this movie can be grateful that this happens to be an era where the competition is staggeringly underwhelming. Or maybe they focused really hard on achieving relative success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            It should come as no surprise that I\u2019m not a believer in the philosophy of \u201cThe Secret,\u201d which (and I know I\u2019m oversimplifying) is that positive thinking yields positive results. I suppose it can be effective in that can\u2019t hurt to not sabotage oneself with negativity. But I also know it\u2019s possible to get in over one\u2019s head with a positive attitude, so somewhere in the middle (otherwise known as \u201crealistic\u201d) is probably healthiest. After all, life can\u2019t be that easy, can it? According to this movie, maybe it can be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Katie Holmes stars as Miranda, a widowed mother of three in hurricane-prone Louisiana. Apart from the obvious, nothing is going her way. She\u2019s buried under a mountain of debt, her job is about to be greatly affected by a storm, her house is falling apart, one of her daughters\u2019 Sweet Sixteen party is getting upstaged, another daughter won\u2019t stop nagging her for a pony, and she has a toothache. Oh, and she just got distracted while driving and plowed into the back of Bray Johnson (Josh Lucas), a visitor from out of town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Fortunately, Bray isn\u2019t as vindictive as, say, Russell Crowe in \u201cUnhinged.\u201d He offers to repair Miranda\u2019s car, and later her house. He subscribes to the philosophy of \u201cThe Secret,\u201d and gets the family to subscribe to it as well, especially once things start going their way. Pizzas arrive at the house to spare them from a lousy beans-and-rice dinner, the repairs go better than expected, the daughter comes up with a great idea for her birthday party, and Miranda\u2019s boyfriend (Jerry O\u2019Connell) proposes to her. Seriously, everything starts going right, like one ridiculous reward after another, to drive home the point that this philosophy supposedly works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            There are two additional twists to the movie, both involving the mysterious Bray. The first is that he has a connection to Miranda\u2019s late husband. He\u2019s actually in town to tell Miranda about it, but the right opportunity never presents itself (one time he allows himself to be interrupted by a microwave timer going off; try a little harder, buddy) and later there\u2019s a fallout with her saying \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you tell me?\u201d and him saying \u201cI tried\u2026\u201d The other involves Miranda\u2019s romantic life. The movie thankfully avoids the temptation to make a certain character an outright jerk, but then falls into a pit of allowing something else to be way too convenient to avoid complexity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Watching \u201cThe Secret: Dare to Dream,\u201d I bounced between whether to rate it a C- or a D. It\u2019s too cheesy and wedded to its questionable philosophy for anything higher, but too light to really be enraging. I eventually landed on a D because the movie just wouldn\u2019t let the pony storyline go. But then I halfway-sarcastically tried getting The Secret to work by thinking positively about a long-overdue tax refund from the IRS. Lo and behold, the next time I checked my refund status, I was told that after five months, it had finally been approved. Coincidence or not, I have to reward the movie for that. Next up, I want major theatrical releases to return full time so I can see better movies than this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: C-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Secret: Dare to Dream\u201d is available On Demand through online streaming services and likely through your local cable provider. The film is rated PG for language and an injury image. Its running time is 107 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver             \u201cThe Secret: Dare to Dream\u201d has lingered in prime real estate at the top of my On Demand system\u2019s Movies section for over two months now.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":47322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47321"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}