The Secret: Dare To Dream (2020) Movie Review

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 Okay, there's no denying that I am a bit obsessed with Katie Holmes right, let's get this out there. I mean c'mon, she is the Rachel from Batman Begins. I would watch the movie just to catch up with Katie to be honest, but still, let's just get past the fanboy stuff and actually talk about her acting in this one. Starring Katie Holmes, who we all adore, and Josh Lucas, well, Josh Lucas and directed by Andy Tennant, which most of you will know for Fool's Gold (2008) or maybe from Hitch (2005) which was a way better title but also was trapped in views front. In any case, we're here to talk about his latest (Well, it's been a year but I just got a chance to watch it so, yeah) work The Secret: Dare To Dream, so let's do that, let's talk the secret. 

 First of all, it's really easy to see Katie Holmes adopting a more and more calmer act in every title she adds, this is one of them. Her character is Miranda, a widow with three kids, a pessimist. Miranda is a character that, to support her family, would go any route, do any deed. But of course, there's a reason for all that pessimist personality disorder right? Well, let's just say she's not the luckiest person in the universe. After her husband passing away, Miranda gets more and more in debt and becomes broke (not poor, there's a difference, in her own words) In the other hand, Bray (Josh Lucas) is a real optimist. I mean optimistic optimism at it's peak. He is the type of person who says "well, maybe good will follow" after a plane crash I feel like. Anyways, as irritating as that sounds, his character is actually has a throughly developed back story, which was on it's own a plus for me. Yes, maybe they could build up even more strings on that back story with maybe inner thoughts to his past wife, but yeah, still enough to cover this in my humble opinion. Josh Lucas, jokes aside, is a really, straight up good actor, nothing to stop me from saying this at this point. Think of Don from Glory Road (2006) right? That was good acting. This? Well maybe not as much, but still, it's also easy to see him getting this more easy going act in this movie, which was really casual for me actually. The guy just has that act in him I suppose.

Character development is decent. There's no lagging on most of the back stories. Maybe except for kids' relationships with their dad after the crash. Still though, even the little Bess (Chloe Lee) has a very strong personality even though she simply has no scene worthy to the story itself. The worst development reward goes to Tucker (Jerry O'Connell) for having no recollection of life in it's entirety and is just there to fulfill the jealous new fiancee duties. He is just a guy that is desperate, in love, and in the end is crushed anyway, as it's portrayed. Other than that though, I had no major problems with characters, even with Bobby (Celia Weston) who I can swear was there just to irritate the viewer, which means the character was rather strong enough.

Story development is slow, and simple, in a bad way. You can pretty much guess anything and everything, even with timestamps. The story drags pretty much the whole first half, which is pretty much just scenes serving exactly the same plate to viewer, which makes it dull, empty. Story also is lacking sense quite a lot. If I was Miranda, I would've called the police pretty much every night after that first weird encounter where the stranger asked for tapes from my son in a weird manner and then said you wouldn't understand to me. Now that is just creepy. Kindness should just stay away from our society, it's just creepy. Joke aside, the movie lacks explaining on the road to Bray becoming this family friend figure from being just a weird stranger with a truck and mechanical skills.

Scenery is nice, but the whole movie being limited to 2-3 set places in total is a real downer. Considering in the fact that the movie is not that much of a low budget production, I would at least expect to see a little more. It would be better if we could see some different shots in indoor shooting of the Wells house at least. All movie they go on about the house being small, children living together in a small room together, but we never see a room, or anything small in that sense. Maybe a small scene of Miranda giving the little ones a night night kiss right? Would add up in the end. Or maybe show them sitting on the couch at least, for once..

The music is pretty good though, I must add this before I sum up. I shazamed some tunes and end up getting to know the Striking Matches. They have some really good road trip songs, I really did like them blending in with scenes of this, a nice touch. Actually, as I'm writing this, I'm listening to "Waiting" which was the one used for this movie, pretty good. Anyways, back to the review geeks.

Overall, characters are easy to get by, mostly thanks to the above avarage acting. Yes, this movie is not a peak or a "known for" title for either of the stars, or the director, no denying that but it still is not as bad as I thought it would be, I'm proud to say. That is actually even more interesting since Tennant has TV roots mostly, and we all know what the poison of that root does to romance right? Well, as I said, not as bad as I thought it would be. The Secret: Dare To Dream is a decent scratch to the book based drama trend, and it seems to have worked. Still, it had really clear flaws, some acceptable, some not so much. I'm really happy with this as is, but I would actually want to see more. In the end, it's not who we are, but what we do that defines us.

Cinemortals Rating : 7/10

Reviewed By : Batuhan