Katie Holmes and Josh Lucas take THE SECRET movie beyond belief to a healing love crush

by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent

Movies like THE SECRET: DARE TO DREAM come along to remind us that action is required to switch directions in life. So Lionsgate has just released this Katie Holmes and Josh Lucas starrer at the perfect time for a pandemic pause. The source material for this film, also called “The Secret,” can be shorthanded to three words: “thoughts become things.”

Sure, sounds easy? Go ahead, dream up your next $1200 COVID-19 Government paycheck, even a direct deposit. Oh wait, you are probably getting one soon.

That’s a cheater example. Later you can google-up some famous names, including Plato, Churchill, Emerson, Carnegie, even Oprah Winfrey who have dreamt up a life beyond what even they thought was possible.

For now, let’s go back to Lionsgate with a movie that puts all this woo-woo theory into plot.

Here’s how the production notes read: “Based on the groundbreaking best-selling book about the law of attraction by Rhonda Byrne, The Secret: Dare to Dream follows Miranda (Katie Holmes), a young widow trying to make ends meet while raising her three children and dating her boyfriend (Jerry O’Connell). A devastating storm brings an enormous challenge and a mysterious man, Bray (Josh Lucas), into Miranda’s life. Bray reignites the family’s spirit but, unbeknownst to Miranda, also holds an important secret — one that will change everything. With its timeless messages of hope, compassion, and gratitude, The Secret: Dare to Dream is an inspiring and heartwarming film that shows how positive thoughts can transform our lives.”

Okay, shake off the pixie dust from that lovely blurb, because in this movie, a charming but gaunt Katie Holmes thinks nothing else can possibly go wrong in her checkered life, so naturally she rear-ends a pick-up truck. But there’s a drop-dead gorgeous guy inside.

Whom she ignores of course, until the man is literally fixing a hole in her roof, where ‘light has dawns on marble head’ as the saying goes, as sparks fly. As with all things in this bittersweet all-too-human life, the good and bad come rolled up in a fungible reality.

While Jerry O’Connell’s rich guy schmaltz is met with fan-favorite approval from Miranda’s heat-seeking mother-in-law, played to the nines by Celia Weston, there is something wrong with Mr. Right. Josh Lucas, fresh off his FORD V FERRARI star turn, steps into the loveless breach here. He narrows that wide chasm in Katie Holme’s leading heart, created by the searing loss of her genius-inventor dearly departed husband.

That’s too easy, of course, because calamities and mistaken identity-like moments befall our love triangle.

These circumstances are the front-drop, if you will, for the backdrop which is that these characters’ lives are governed by… wait for it…

The Law of Attraction, drum roll, and so are you, me, and the deep blue sea. Ironically, even best-selling pontificators such as Tony Robbins mention the ‘reticular activition system’ (RAS) as a way the brain’s neurons focus on connecting you to what you’re thinking about. As in, hey, didn’t you just see the same car you want 10 times before you bought it? Or better yet, did you know tennis ace Roger Federer became a champion because he did not set goals? No, he uses “a system.”

Remarkably, Katie Holmes and Josh Lucas manage to glide through their ambivalent love journey in THE SECRET: DARE TO DREAM without the heavy hand of nearly 3,000 years of ancient wisdom, from the emerald tablets to the founding fathers, weighing them down.

In the end, this is a family movie about how fractured lives can be glued back together, and, unlike porcelain, the best results come when you can no longer see the seams where the broken pieces have joined together. It’s feel-good fun, a la Josh Lucas in a Sweet Home Alabama-style frolic, which makes sense since this production team produced that movie.

Maybe this is the first pandemic crowd-pleaser, now that the secret’s out, lol.

Directed by Andy Tennant, you can catch THE SECRET now on Prime Video.

#TheSecretMovie – watch it, and party like it’s $19.99, ps, because it is but you can attract it!

😉

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