The guilty pleasure of self-help

The Secret

is a new adaptation of a worldwide publishing phenomenon that occurred in 2006 with a self-help book that only in Spain was more than 150 weeks among the most purchased books and that at this point has reached 30 million copies sold.

A commercial success that turned its author, the Australian Rhonda Byrne, into a kind of guru of positive thinking.

A staunch defender of a concept called the Law of Attraction, Byrne reflected in her book the benefits of this unscientific theory that promulgates the ability to attract good luck with our thoughts.

That is to say, those "there is no harm that does not come" or "when a door closes, a window opens" of the popular proverb and of the ashen anti-thought.

The plot focuses on how the drain of domestic and financial problems of the widow with three children that Katie Holmes gives life changes its meaning the day that a mysterious stranger played by Josh Lucas shows up at her house to release her, between seductive smiles in the ear by ear, a string of self-help literature clichés that, why deny it, are addictive like sugar.

A fairy tale that gets lost along the way because of a crude and flat commercial handwriting that misses the mark and a Katie Holmes who lacks grit and nerve and chemistry with Josh Lucas.

Andy Tennant turns

into a syrupy romantic drama (when the couple toasts it, as is, eating waffles), and injected all the time with those clichés of Murphy's Law whose platitudes can be embarrassing, but also secretly pleasant .

And it's a shame that the movie doesn't take advantage of them because a good injection of optimism and magical thinking is never in excess.

THE SECRET.

DARE TO DREAM

Direction: Andy Tennant.

Cast: Katie Holmes, Josh Lucas, Jerry O'Connell, Celia Weston, Han Soto, Yohance Myles. Genre: Romantic drama.

United States, 2020 Duration: 107 minutes.