Metacritic reviews

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

Despite most everything else in the movie being predictable, Bray’s mystery is hard to guess.

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.

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..

Shorn of its New Age platitudes, the film works reasonably well as a mature, feel-good romance, especially since Holmes and Lucas are so engaging that you find yourselves rooting for their characters to get together.

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 competent filmmaking in the service of lousy storytelling.

Littered with confounding clichés and hokey devices, director/co-writer Andy Tennant’s feature is the exact inverse of what a passionate romance should aspire to be, let alone one preaching the power of positivity.

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.

Director Andy Tennant’s tone, by the way, resembles that of religious films, like last year’s “Breakthrough” with Chrissy Metz. Holmes is wholesome, and her third-wheel suitor, Tuck (Jerry O’Connell), is well-intended, if tortilla-flat. The music is cheesy and inspirational. But the whole thing is covered in materialist grime.