Pay It Forward
(2000)
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Based on a best-selling novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde and boasting the star power of three prior Oscar winners--Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, and Haley Joel Osment--PAY IT FORWARD spins a heartwarming yarn about an 11-year-old boy who comes up with an utopian idea as a project for school. History teacher Eugene Simenot (Spacey) offers the same ongoing extra-credit assignment he has proffered every year: Come up with an idea that will change the world. However, he expects nothing more from his students than halfhearted efforts that fall far shy of their mark. Simenot is therefore unprepared for precocious, irrepressible Trevor McKinney (played with wide-eyed wonder by Osment), who conjures up a stunning scheme. Trevor suggests the concept that every person who benefits from someone else's good deed should "pay it forward," instead of paying it back, and in turn offer favors to three other people. The first guinea pig for Trevor's experiment is his overworked, imperfect mom (Helen Hunt) for whom he tries to find a boyfriend. |
Oscar winners Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt co-star in a movie that conforms to the American ethos that nothing succeeds like excess. When asked to come up with a way of making the world a better place as part of a class project, schoolboy Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense) concocts the notion of carrying out random acts of kindness to strangers, who then pay the favour forward to new beneficiaries rather than back to the giver. This notion attracts the attention of the media and brings together the youngster's emotionally scarred, alcoholic mum (Hunt) and physically scarred schoolteacher (Spacey), both in need of companionship. Reasonable performances in stereotyped roles sustain interest during the early part of film, but increasing sentimentality may prove hard to stomach for the more cynical viewer.