The Secret: Dare to Dream

Once you start this film, you might not want it to end.

Hopefully the deceptively stern ideological stance of The Secret has been dampened enough by Tennant and his cast’s efforts (the great Celia Weston is also a standout as Miranda’s hovering, lightly nagging mother-in-law) that only the better, more wanly encouraging notes of its decidedly capitalist fantasy will linger in people’s minds.

The Secret: Dare to Dream at best feels like a tepid distraction even for those receptive to its blueprint, far from the stuff that dreams are made of.

It’s mostly kind of tolerable in a low stakes, rosé-wine-swigging way, inoffensively middling rather than rotten, an easy, undemanding afternoon watch with nothing of note other than a few laughably dumb moments..

It’s competent filmmaking in the service of lousy storytelling.

There is nothing new, exciting or particularly challenging about what The Secret: Dare to Dream is selling.

Dare To Dream delivers The Secret‘s philosophy in classic Nicholas Sparks movie format, complete with deferred scholarships, single mothers finding love, and copious Spanish moss.

I liked the music. It was well connected. The director managed to make a really beautiful movie. You just have to go and see

While admittedly schmaltzy, sometimes predictable, cloyingly cheerful and thinly written, this long-simmering love story based on the metaphysical teachings of the wildly successful self-help video and book "The Secret" is clearly an easy target for cynical critics and skeptics of the material's basic premises. What's more, the look and feel of the film often seem like something straight off The Hallmark Channel or Lifetime Television. Nevertheless, this crowd-pleasing take on law of attraction philosophy does a more than capable job of illustrating its rudimentary principles without belaboring the "teaching" aspect, working its ideas into the narrative seamlessly, subtly and effectively. This is not groundbreaking cinema, but it is by far one of the best fictionalized cinematic adaptations of self-help material for the big screen that I have ever seen. Even if somewhat sappy, it's refreshing to see an uplifting release come along that offers viewers hope and inspiration during trying times -- or any time for that matter.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

(Mauro Lanari) Even a silly love story would be useful to return to address outstanding issues such as the neoprotagorism from wishful thinking to von Foerster's radical constructivism, by his own admission direct child of Fichte's magical idealism. But Tucker's sacrifice for the happiness of others fu*ks everything up.

I thought the ending was cringeworthy as hell and it felt like the love connection was forced in there. The kids were either horrible actors or the material they had to work with was horrible, probably the material!