Pay It Forward

Pay It Forward
by Mimi Leder

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DVD Reviews of Pay It Forward

DVD Review: Shamelessly manipulative
Summary: 2 Stars

What no one seemed particularly eager to consider was that the movie should do more than just banty about the viewer's emotions. That there should be a script worthy of its morality. That it should end with some dignity.

Pay It Forward is an embarrassing attempt at worthy story-telling. The three lead actors -- Helen Hunt, Haley Joel Osment, and Kevin Spacey -- do what they can with the material at hand, but they don't fair very well. Despite continually being the catalyst for the film's progress, Osment's character is not suppose to be the pivotal one, (that really belongs to the disfigured school teacher played by Spacey), but as the precocious 7th grader who takes Spacey's social studies extra credit homework assignment seriously and comes up with a way to change the world, Osment's is the character we focus on. Osment is cute and honest and has that whispery-thing that he does with relevant dialogue down to a science. His huge blue eyes are full of expression and he's to be commended for taking on such large roles for the youngster that he is. He plays Trevor convincingly, a kid who's more mature than his years, mostly from having to take care of his drunken mother, played by Helen Hunt. Trevor schemes up the "pay it forward" plan of doing good deeds for three people in need and having each of them, in turn, pass the favors on to three more. As he tries, and apparently fails, to successfully put the plan into action, there is a movement spreading through the country that he is responsible for, yet unaware of. People are selflessly helping strangers, paying favors forward. In one case, an attorney gives a reporter the keys to a brand new jaguar, which peaks the reporter's interest and causes him to track "the story" from Los Angeles to Nevada to Trevor's door.

Meanwhile, when Trevor's mother Arlene find a homeless man living in her garage (the first of Trevor's good deeds), she goes bursting into Mr. Simonet's (Spacey) class at school, demanding an explanation of her son's "homework assignment". It is the first meeting of these two characters, a scene which should be charged with energy, but it falls flat, setting the tone for the rest of the movie. Hunt and Spacey lack any semblance of chemistry, and their characters' relationship, which turns from adversarial to friendship to romance, feels forced onto the viewer. The dialogue is choppy and stilted and completely uninspiring. To Hunt and Spacey's credit, it is obvious that they have a thorough understanding of their characters, respectively -- Hunt plays the drunken, uneducated mother role with gusto, and Spacey plays the over-compensating, serious, disfigured teacher/role model with plenty of uncomfortable reserve. Both of these actors, however, have wonderful chemistry with Osment, making the scenes between each of the two of them far more interesting and compelling to watch. It is Trevor's second attempt at good deeds that brings his teacher and his mother together, and much of the movie is spent playing out the intricate difficulties Trevor encounters in making this matchmaking work.

And then, as if it wasn't enough that it continually uses Osment's cuteness, Spacey's scars, and Hunt's alcoholic struggles to pull the audience's emotional strings, the film stoops lower than low in the manipulation category when delivers its ending. I won't give the end away, but it's shameless movie-making.

Description of Pay It Forward

While this could have turned into unmitigated schmaltz, the acting elevates this film to mitigated schmaltz. By turns powerful and measured, the performances of Spacey, Hunt, and Osment can't make up for the many missteps in a screenplay that sanitizes the look of the lower-middle class and expects us to believe that homeless alcoholics and junkies speak in the elevated manner of grad students. (Can that really be Angie Dickinson as Hunt's dispossessed mother? Yes, it is!) The germ of the story is a good one, though, and one may wonder how it would have been handled by the likes of Frank Capra, who could balance sentiment with humor. But clearly Capra would never have let the ending of his version to take the nosedive into cliché and pathos that director Mimi Leder has allowed in this film. More than a few viewers will also recognize that Leder has blatantly borrowed her final image from Field of Dreams, where its intended effect was more keenly and honestly felt. --Jim Gay