Can You Keep a Secret?

If you’ve ever sat through a flight with enough turbulence to make you start bargaining with a higher power, you know that the filter between your brain and your mouth tends to dissolve. Usually, this results in a quiet prayer or an internal vow to never eat airport sushi again. In Can You Keep a Secret?, our protagonist Emma Corrigan takes it a step further. Convinced the plane is going down, she offloads every humiliating detail of her life—from her fake resume skills to her feelings about her boyfriend’s "decorative" pillows—onto the handsome stranger in 1A.

I watched this movie while nursing a mild head cold and accidentally dropping an entire sleeve of saltine crackers into my lap, and honestly, that level of mild, crumbling chaos felt like the perfect atmospheric pairing for this film. It’s a 2019 time capsule of a genre that was already gasping for air in the theatrical market, caught in the awkward transition between the glossy studio rom-coms of the early 2000s and the "content" churn of the modern streaming era.

The Eyeballs of a Leading Lady

Alexandra Daddario carries this movie with a level of frantic energy that I can only describe as "highly caffeinated cartoon." If you’ve seen her in The White Lotus or True Detective, you know she has a screen presence that is impossible to ignore, largely because Daddario acts with her eyeballs like they’re independent contractors working for a different, more intense movie. As Emma, she’s tasked with playing the "relatable mess," a trope that was beginning to feel a bit stale by 2019. She’s charming, but the script often forces her into "adorkable" situations that feel more like a checklist than a character arc.

Opposite her is Tyler Hoechlin as Jack Harper, the elusive CEO of the company where Emma works. Of course, he’s the guy from the plane. Hoechlin has the unenviable task of playing a man who is essentially a sentient suit for the first hour. He’s stoic, he’s rich, and he knows her secrets. The problem is that the "secrets" Emma spilled aren't actually that scandalous—they’re mostly just mildly embarrassing workplace gripes. This leaves the central conflict feeling a bit like a low-stakes HR dispute rather than a sweeping romance. When the film tries to pivot into actual emotional stakes, the chemistry between the leads feels like two attractive people trying to solve a Sudoku puzzle together—pleasant enough, but hardly combustible.

A Relic of the Pre-Pandemic Pivot

Released just months before the world changed, Can You Keep a Secret? represents a very specific moment in cinema history. It’s a mid-budget adaptation of a Sophie Kinsella novel, the kind of project that would have been a massive hit in 2004 starring Kate Hudson. By 2019, however, these films were being swallowed whole by Netflix. Watching it now, you can see the struggle to justify its existence on a big screen. The production design is clean but anonymous, and the direction by Elise Durán feels more like a polished pilot for a streaming series than a cinematic event.

The real highlights are tucked away in the supporting cast. Sunita Mani, who is consistently the best thing in everything she touches (shoutout to GLOW), plays Emma’s roommate Lissy. She brings a grounded, weirdo energy that the movie desperately needs. Whenever the film drifts too far into the saccharine, Mani arrives to remind us that actual human beings don't talk in scripted quips. There’s also David Ebert as Connor, the "wrong guy" boyfriend, who plays the role with such a specific, beige enthusiasm that I almost felt bad for him.

The Mechanics of the Gimmick

For a comedy, the hit-to-miss ratio is a bit like a game of darts played in the dark. Some of the physical comedy lands—Daddario is genuinely good at looking like she’s about to trip over her own feet—but the dialogue often feels like it was written by an AI trying to mimic a Sex and the City B-plot. The film relies heavily on the "secret" gimmick, but because the secrets are so tame, the eventual "betrayal" feels manufactured.

I kept waiting for a reveal that would actually shock the system—maybe she’s a corporate spy? Maybe he’s a ghost? Instead, it stays strictly within the lanes of the genre. There is a comfort in that, I suppose. It’s a movie that doesn't want to challenge you; it wants to wrap you in a lukewarm blanket and tell you that everything will be okay as long as you’re quirky and the CEO is hot. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a flavored seltzer: it’s bubbly, it’s mostly water, and you’ll forget the taste three minutes after you finish it.

Ultimately, Can You Keep a Secret? is a harmless, occasionally breezy distraction that suffers from a lack of identity. It’s not quite funny enough to be a great comedy, and not quite swoon-worthy enough to be a classic romance. It sits in that 2019 purgatory of movies that were too small for the box office and just a little too theatrical for the "background noise" streaming category. If you’re a die-hard fan of the book or just really enjoy watching Alexandra Daddario navigate workplace social anxiety, it’s a fine way to spend 94 minutes. Just don’t expect it to keep any secrets from you—it’s exactly what it looks like on the tin.