The Secret: Dare to Dream (2020)
Directed by Andy Tennant
No — The Secret: Dare to Dream is not woke, scoring 5 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
The Secret: Dare to Dream arrives with the soft thud of a self-help paperback left in a beach rental.
Consciousness Markers
As an adaptation of Rhonda Byrne's self-help book, the film repeatedly sermonizes on the Law of Attraction and the power of positive thinking, with Bray explicitly instructing the family to believe the universe will deliver.
Miranda is a hard-working widow who eventually calls off an engagement she doesn't want and quits a job she dislikes, but this is standard romance plotting rather than any articulated feminist agenda.
The cast is overwhelmingly white, led by Katie Holmes, Josh Lucas, and Jerry O'Connell, with no diverse casting choices made as a statement or otherwise.
There are no LGBTQ+ characters, relationships, or themes anywhere in this heterosexual romance.
Despite a New Orleans setting, the film engages with no racial themes, commentary, or consciousness whatsoever.
A hurricane serves purely as a plot device to strand the handyman at the house; there is no climate messaging or environmental crusade.
The film is if anything pro-wealth, with a patent's monetary value framed as the solution to the family's problems.
No body-positivity themes or messaging are present.
No neurodivergent characters or themes appear in the film.
The film makes no historical claims to revise; it is a contemporary fictional romance.
Why it received this score
The Secret: Dare to Dream arrives with the soft thud of a self-help paperback left in a beach rental. It is a 2020 romantic drama adapted from Rhonda Byrne's 2006 blockbuster of positive thinking, and it approaches the screen with a fixed smile and an envelope no one can quite deliver. The cast is uniformly white, the heterosexual romance proceeds without interruption, and New Orleans functions as a backdrop of seafood restaurants and storms. There is no racial consciousness, no LGBTQ presence, no body-positive argument, no neurodivergent thread, and no historical revision. These absences are not sins. They are simply the film's operating conditions.
What the film does have is a message, and it shares that message at every available meal. Bray Johnson, an engineering professor and amateur inventor, arrives to fix a bumper and stays to explain that the universe rewards belief. The screenplay treats this as wisdom. Pizza appears after a positive-thinking speech. A roof collapses under hurricane weather that is purely meteorological. The film's climate conscience is a tree through a ceiling, and its economic conscience is a patent check large enough to solve everything. Miranda's late-film decision to call off an engagement and quit a restaurant where she was unhappy is welcome, but it reads as standard romance plotting, the genre's ordinary reward for a harried widow.
The film's real cultural instrument is lecture energy. It sermonizes on the Law of Attraction with the patience of a substitute teacher, and Bray's instruction to believe the universe will deliver has the cadence of a seminar. We are told to visualize, to trust, to receive. The film is not angry about this. It is serene, which is worse. By the time Miranda and Bray embrace at a Waffle House and a pony appears for a child's long-held dream, the film has completed its transaction. It has asked for nothing except our belief in belief. The result is a romance with the spiritual texture of a laminated card. It means well, and it means it repeatedly.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
A widow with three children hires a handyman to fix her house during a major storm. When not doing home repairs, he shares his philosophy of believing in the power of the universe to deliver what we want.
Questions about The Secret: Dare to Dream
Is The Secret: Dare to Dream woke?
No — The Secret: Dare to Dream is not woke, scoring 5 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does The Secret: Dare to Dream have any woke elements?
1 of the 10 markers register at 30 or above, led by Lecture Energy (45). On Lecture Energy: As an adaptation of Rhonda Byrne's self-help book, the film repeatedly sermonizes on the Law of Attraction and the power of positive thinking, with Bray explicitly instructing the family to believe the universe will deliver.
How does The Secret: Dare to Dream compare to other 2020 movies?
It ranks #184 of the 227 films from 2020 we've scored; their average is 21. The wokest is One Night in Miami... (83).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.