The Secret (1992 TV Movie) User Reviews

Dunmore Family Values

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 3 September 2013]

Even before his stroke Kirk Douglas was gracefully transitioning into elderly character roles as he is in The Secret. I've always admired him for taking charge of his own career and having a very good instinct over what was a challenging role for him.

In The Secret he plays Mike Dunsmore a well respected businessman in a small New England coastal village with what he thinks is a terrible secret, he's dyslexic, he cannot read or write. When he was a youngster this was not a diagnosable condition. With the help of his late wife and his friend and store employee Brock Peters, Douglas covered this up very well. But it's led to a breach with his grown son Bruce Boxleitner.

Now however dyslexia has struck his grandson Jesse Tendler and these two have the relationship that Douglas and Boxleitner didn't. Daughter-in-law Laura Harrington is caught in the middle. How it all works out for the Dunmore family is the basis of The Secret.

I did love the location cinematography in Nova Scotia standing in for New England. And Kirk Douglas is a totally different character than the larger than life Spartacus or Jonathan Shields in his younger days. Those characters are not even hinted at when Douglas essays the part of Mike Dunmore. He gets great support from the ensemble and his scenes with young Tendler have poignancy and those with Boxleitner are quite real and touching.

The Secret is a wonderful film even with the made for television tag it has. Good for the whole family.

I knew someone who had a learning disability, possibly dyslexia. In his short life Roy Gomez was raised in a group home which never diagnosed the problem. A secretary in a lawyer's office I was with him in spotted it and a lot of things made sense. Roy read comics exclusively, now I realize because of the pictures and in restaurants I remember him struggling with the menu. I wonder had he been diagnosed would he have lived a long productive life, he had a lot of issues besides this one.

Anyway, this review is dedicated to Roy Gomez 1970-1996.

Powerful

[tarbosh22000 · 7/10 · 22 March 2005]

"The Secret" is a very good movie about letting your secrets go. Kirk Douglas plays Mike Dunmore, a well-liked man in his community. When he is asked to be a councilman he wants to do it, but he has a secret. His grandson is his life and Mike's son Patrick always resents him, so does he tell the truth? Mike's secret is actually pretty different. I didn't expect it.

Kirk Douglas puts in a great performance as usual. You really feel for him. The only weakness is the grandson who seems a little too coached for his line readings. Besides that, "The Secret" is an excellent movie.

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An important film, considering how common the problem is.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 26 May 2023]

The setting for "The Secret" is most unusual, and I appreciate that. It's about a family of cranberry farmers who live in Nova Scotia, Canada...and I liked seeing the unusual locale.

The Dunmore family lives in Nova Scotia. Grandpa Mike (Kirk Douglas) runs a small store and his son Patrick (Bruce Boxleitner) is a cranberry farmer. The two do NOT get along very well...and Patrick really resents all the time and attention Mike pays to his grandson, Danny. This stems from Mike not being there much for Patrick as he grew up. Mike never read to Patrick or helped him with his homework...and Patrick seems REALLY bent out of shape about this.

While Danny is a terrific athlete and a nice kid, he has a secret. The boy cannot read and has been faking it for years. But now his teacher has noticed and is trying to get the Dunmores to get Danny tested to see if he has a learning disability. But, inexplicably, Patrick is so against it that he seems a bit crazed (a MAJOR problem with the story actually). So, Grandpa takes Danny to Boston to be assessed...and when Patrick learns he puts a stop to it. But this abortive visit to a clinic isn't all a giant mistake, as Mike decides to take the appointment because he, too, has a secret...he cannot read either.

The film is odd. The acting is generally very good (especially for Douglas). But the character played by Boxleitner is poorly written...too extreme, too angry and too unlikable. He is almost like a caricature, not a real person like everyone else in the story. It's a shame, as otherwise it's an excellent film and Boxleitner is a fine actor...given the parts for him are well written. The film talks about a very common and important problem, dyslexia...so common that it's very possible you or someone you love is struggling with the disorder...so try to look past this problem with Patrick.

Preposterous Premise

[mjmaddox · 1/10 · 7 October 2007]

The plot line of this full-length movie would have been better suited to a 20-minute film. The father's furious refusal to have his fourth-grader tested to discover why he has been unable to learn to read is unbelievable and over-acted.

The premise of the film is that both the boy and the grandfather are unable to read because of a condition called "dyslexia." After having been told that this condition has blighted the grandfather's life and threatens to do the same to the grandson, viewers receive an astonishing revelation: The $1200 specialist who tests Mike tells him that the grandson can learn to read if he is taught to "sound out letters."

It is incredible to me that a child could get as far as the fourth grade without having been taught to sound out letters.

Surely the "secret" here is that children should be taught the sound/symbol relationships in the first grade, instead of withholding the information until they develop reading problems.

The secret is how did this script get chosen to become a film

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 16 September 2021]

Okay, so it's understandable how the Aging Kirk Douglas could get through life without being diagnosed with a learning disability, and his dyslexia was not identifiable as a learning disability when he grew up. But for his grandson, a fourth grader, not to be able to read or write and for that to not be diagnosed even by a new teacher is ridiculous. It is obvious by the time the new teacher at the grandsons School has a grand Father's Day where students read something they've written about a particular grandparent oh, they should have been able to diagnose the issue. It is obvious that the kid is holding a blank piece of paper and there would obviously be previous assignments, especially with the new teacher on the first day of class giving evaluations to figure out where each student lay in their ability to read and write. Even in third grade, a student should have some ability in reading and writing even on a minimal level or diagnosed with a learning disability, and the script of this film never deals with any of these common sense issues.

There are a lot of other minimal details that are covered by the film, and they are instantly eye-rolling. How could Douglas and his grandson get around Boston and find the train station if they can't read and how could they pay their fare without being able to read fare paying instructions? The strength of the film lies in the performance of Kirk Douglas, commanding and elegant and concrrned and certainly the type of grandfather a kid would love to have. He is attentive, loving and certainly closer to him than his own offspring. Douglas's son is an absolute jerk, in complete denial of his own son's learning disability, and absolutely nasty to his father because the son prefers the company of Douglas over him. Only the daughter in law seems to be able to show any real understanding and gratitude, and even she initially seems distant from the issue.

On the bright side, there's also Brock Peters as Douglas's best friend and beautiful New England locations (actually filmed in Nova Scotia) which shows the beauty of the north east in fall. You also get to see the cranberry growing industry, something that is quite fascinating. The changing colors of the trees will instantly bring up the song Autumn Leaves in your mind and when the photography turns out to be one of the best elements of a film, that is a sad statement indeed. It is a watchable movie but the small elements that make you think of everything wrong with it eventually makes it a disappointing one. I do not feel that I watched a film that dealt with dyslexia realistically and hope maybe there will be one better than this and the big screen disappoint "Stanley and Iris".