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PAY IT FORWARD Send This Review to a Friend
First let's get the title meaning straight. The reference is to the idea that someone should do a good turn for three people. But instead of paying back the benefactors, each recipient pays it forward to three others who in turn will do the same, thereby spreading goodness the world over. Your good deed for the day can be telling three friends what a maudlin, soppy and sappy movie "Pay It Forward" is.
The only positive factor is the acting. Kevin Spacey is up to his customary effectiveness, this time as a 7th grade school teacher who has suffered severe burns and psychological traumas and needs someone who can make him come out of his emotional shell. Haley Joel Osment, who won an Oscar nomination for his work in "The Sixth Sense," sensitively plays Trevor, a troubled pupil who, impressed with his teacher's challenge about relating to the world, concocts the pay it forward concept. Helen Hunt does a credible job as the boy's single mother, struggling to find her way out of alcoholism, pay the bills, raise her son properly and with any luck, find the right man.
The setup is not unpromising, but Leslie Dixon's screenplay, based on Catherine Ryan Hyde's novel, drives it into the ground with lack of credibility to the point where some of it is laughable instead of tragic, including an alcoholic shtick by Angie Dickinson. There is also excess baggage in the plot thread involving a reporter (Jay Mohr) trying to track down the mysterious story of the pay it forward trail. Jon Bon Jovi turns up as Trevor's father, who is nothing but trouble.
Director Mimi Leder strains to shape the ingredients into emotional impact, but as the complications are piled high, the effect is one of manipulation, right up to the final outcome and smarmy sentimentality. "Pay It Forward" works overtime in attempting to be uplifting and meaningful and admittedly, some will find it their cup of uplift, but from this vantage point the film sets drama backward. A Warner Brothers release.
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