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Such a good idea deserves a better movie than Pay It Forward turns out to be. Don't fault the star-studded cast, though.
By STEVE PERSALL
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 19, 2000
Pay It Forward is the name of a plan created by 11-year-old Trevor McKinney for a class project. His social studies teacher assigned students to think of a way to improve the world. Trevor's idea could work.
He'll do favors for three people, something special they couldn't do for themselves. Then those three people will each do the same for three more, and so on. The world would exponentially become a better place. Sort of a pyramid scheme of generosity.
What a nice idea for a movie. What a mess director Mimi Leder made of it.
The problems with Pay It Forward can be traced backward from its incredibly downbeat climax to a puzzling midsection putting Trevor's plan on the back burner. Changing the world isn't as important as soothing the emotional wounds of a few conveniently pathetic characters. Harsh topics such as child abuse, alcoholism, homelessness and heroin addiction are shuffled for easy pathos.
This isn't the movie Warner Bros. is selling in those optimistic preview trailers.
Keep going backward to scenes immediately preceding that gloomy conclusion. Jay Mohr plays a newspaper reporter (also magazine and TV reporter in the film's loose grasp on logic). His investigation brings him to Las Vegas and Trevor (Haley Joel Osment), gushing about the Pay It Forward "movement" stretching to Los Angeles.
Leder hasn't shown us any of this alleged ripple effect. Now, with 15 minutes left, it's a movement? Sorry, but Trevor helping a homeless junkie who fixes a truck and stops a suicide attempt without witnesses isn't a movement. Neither is a burglar who performs an emergency room courtesy after getting a lift to escape the cops. Crime apparently pays forward here.
Just because the reporter was given a new Jaguar by someone paying it forward, it's a movement. Would he have been so enthusiastic if someone had just, say, picked up his cab fare? No, because Hollywood doesn't understand simple acts of kindness. Everything must be grand to perpetuate the illusion. A lot of unpretentious ideas, like Trevor's, get trashed in the process.
Leder skips watching the good that Trevor's plan supposedly creates. Instead, she focuses on how the idea doesn't work in his dysfunctional home. His mother, Arlene (Helen Hunt) guzzles vodka when something goes wrong and can't keep enough in stock. His abusive father (Jon Bon Jovi) shows up for two scenes, to plead for reunion and to blow it.
Trevor tried to prevent that crisis by setting up his promiscuous mom with his social studies teacher, Eugene Simonet (Kevin Spacey), who made the utopian assignment. The courtship is rocky, although Arlene's alcohol dependency disappears without much hassle. Eugene is a conscientious teacher with a body scarred by a tragedy revealed in the film's late rush of manipulation.
The circumstances won't be revealed here, but it's a far more melodramatic harm than novelist Catherine Ryan Hyde presented in her novel. In the book, Eugene was wounded in Vietnam and he's African-American, another curious change with Spacey in the role. The producers probably guessed an interracial romance wouldn't be good box office.
Which brings us back to the first, and ultimately only, reasons to recommend Pay It Forward. Before the film settles into Arlene and Eugene's anguish, Pay It Forward does present a strong case for a better movie than this one. Mostly due to its central trio of actors.
Osment impresses again with his unforced mannerisms before the camera. The Sixth Sense was no fluke. At age 12, he already knows the value of underplaying a role. A simple pursing of his lips, or the deceptively monotone voice sneaking out of them, are foolproof acting tools. Osment makes Trevor an easy child to like, but more important, to respect when he's pitching his plan.
Spacey is fine, as usual, refusing to rely solely on excellent burn makeup to create a sympathetic character. After a while, you don't notice Eugene's scars because Spacey shows us a caring person underneath. However, Leslie Dixon's script keeps forcing the issue, just for heart-tugging effect, and so clumsily.
But, it's not as heavy-handed as Arlene's drinking problem. Her first on-screen drink is a bottle chug Hunt uses to convey everything about her addiction. That could work, if another scene or two would expand the idea. She drinks, she quits, and it's on to the next crisis. Hunt plays it plucky and melancholy, waiting for her next showcase scene.
It would be tougher to feel cynical about Pay It Forward, if the novel and Leder had followed a more upbeat course. Scenes showing Eugene interacting with his class, inspiring them to new considerations and vocabulary, are hints of what could have been. They're so nicely performed that some viewers may develop enough goodwill toward the film to overlook the button-pushing and missed opportunity to inspire later.
Sympathizers can use Trevor's idea and tell three other people to see Pay It Forward, if that many gullible folks seeking a downer exist.
Grade: C
Director: Mimi Leder
Cast: Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, Haley Joel Osment, Jay Mohr, Jim Caviezel, Angie Dickinson, Jon Bon Jovi
Screenplay: Leslie Dixon, based on the novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde
Rating: PG-13; profanity, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual situations, brief violence
Running time: 122 min.