I first mentioned the Opus Movie in March of 2008 when I posted a clip from it on this blog. I was really looking forward to it then, but it was still a long time coming. Then came October, and I wrote about it again as I'd just learned that the movie had become available, and on that post I gave a link as to where it could be purchased, and said I'd be getting mine soon.

Well, I actually had gotten it pretty quickly. I've had the movie since November, and I did watch it back then. And I've watched it a couple more times after that, just to be sure that I was giving it a fair chance.

So, here we go. It's not a bad movie, but it's certainly not "The Secret" by any means. I've tried to figure out what my issue with Opus is, and what I come to is that it's somewhat disjointed. In other words, it doesn't really build upon itself, and the music doesn't just grab you and help to immerse you in the story.

Ah yes, the story. It's a tale that begins with the passing of a great violinist whose only words, to a reporter who's come to try to interview him just as he's passing away, is "the opus." That begins a flashback through history of this man as he first discovers his passion for playing the violin, and all the trials and tribulations he goes through to eventually end up being a great violinist. But we don't really learn what the Opus means until we see the man passing along inspiration to another young man once he's older, just as an older man passed along the inspiration to him.

Thus, the Opus is really not about you, the person, as much as it is about you, the motivator of others. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, as it's an admirable goal for anyone to have. The thing is that it's not necessarily motivational to the viewer as you're watching it. As a story, the movie kind of stops and starts, and you start to wonder why we're following this character in the first place since we rarely see him.

We do have a few of the same people that were in the first movie, but there's a host of new people also, including the maker of the film, Douglas Vermeeren, who seems like a very engaging guy, but in a way it's almost a reminder of why Rhonda Byrnes movie was so powerful. She was in it only at the beginning and at the end, and she didn't speak. She didn't put herself out there as one of the experts, and I think that was part of the appeal of the movie. You see her in the beginning of the movie looking sad, and you see her at the end of the movie feeling glad.

In conclusion, if you're like me and go into watching this movie with The Secret on your mind, you're going to be sadly disappointed. If you can just watch it for what it is, you'll hear some inspiring stories from people who've had to overcome some pretty drastic things in their lives, and that part I enjoyed. But for what I paid, which was twice what I paid for The Secret, I was expecting something that would juice me up. Instead, after watching this movie, I had to go back to The Secret to start feeling good again.