PAY IT FORWARD (2000) Reviewed by Jerry Saravia March 5th, 2001
You have heard the concept before. You receive an e-mail or a letter in the mail regarding a great new opportunity - you send one dollar to seven addresses and they will send one dollar to seven others, and so on. Before you know it, you will make thousands of dollars a month. The idea forms a chain or a pyramid strategy, hence, chain letters. The reason the idea does not work is because it feels like a rip-off, plus whose to say that people will follow through and pay it forward. The film "Pay it Forward" wants us to believe that people repaying acts of kindness for kindness done upon them can work if a kid makes them believe in the idea. But how many people are genuinely kind enough to follow through with such a plan? Do we want to be forced to act kindly?
Consider the opening sequence of the film set in an elementary school. Trevor McKinney (Haley Joel Osment), a seventh grader, listens attentively in class as his social-studies teacher, Mr. Simonet (Kevin Spacey), gives an extra-credit assignment for the semester. The class is to come up with a plan of action to make the world a better place and follow through by performing said action. Trevor devises an original plan: one person does an act of kindness for someone and that person will pay it forward by helping three other people. A chain reaction is expected as numbers will grow and before you know it, the world will be at peace again. But there are flaws with such a plan, aren't there? Could such a chain reaction occur with no money involved? There may be benefits if the acts are reciprocated but what if they aren't? This movie never dares to consider that certain people do not want to be helped or even want to act kindly.
For example, there is the homeless drug addict, Jerry (Jim Caviezel), who is taken home by Trevor. We sense that Jerry is only interested in his next fix, which he is, but he also claims that this kid has helped him to see the light and get another chance at life. There is the homeless alcoholic (Angie Dickinson), her own alcoholic daughter, Arlene, Trevor's mother (Helen Hunt), who always keep a bottle stashed in her washer. There is also another drug addict and a couple of school bullies. And then there is Mr. Simonet, who has burn scars all over his body, uses "a lot of big words" and whom Trevor tries to fix up with his mother, Arlene. Trevor hopes to at least help his mother and Mr. Simonet, as well as his friend who is beaten up by bullies. He is trying to pay it forward. Suddenly, a movement is born, or so it seems.
"Pay it Forward's" structure is all over the place, as it jumps backwards and forwards in time. We see a reporter (Jay Mohr) at a crime scene where his car is nearly demolished. A lawyer sees him, and offers his Jaguar as compensation for the reporter's loss. The lawyer is paying it forward, and thus begins the reporter's quest to discover the origins of this movement. "Four Months Earlier" is the title reminding us of where we are in time yet throughout the film, Jay Mohr's character seems to occupy the same timeline as Trevor's, particularly during the genesis of his plan.
Time shifting is not this film's problem. A bigger flaw is the lack of time spent on this ingenious plan, its pros and cons and so on. Too much time is devoted to the silly romance between Mr. Simonet and Trevor's mother to the point of nausea. Helen Hunt is astoundingly good as the trashy waitress but her alcoholic mood swings seem too abrupt to really believe, or as abrupt as it should be. She undergoes such a quick recovery that it hardly seems plausible she was ever an alcoholic to begin with. Kevin Spacey is adequately restrained as the scarred Mr. Simonet, and has all the best dialogue scenes. But hardly much of this matters as much as Trevor's plan of action. We see samples of it but not enough is balanced with the film's increasingly tepid romance, not to mention the inclusion of Trevor's own father (Jon Bon Jovi) who appears and disappears so fast that you'll forget he ever existed. I would also have liked to have seen more of Dickinson's character or even Caviezel's.
Some have called "Pay it Forward" shamelessly manipulative and overly sentimental. Some have called it touching. I just found the Spacey and Hunt characters real and engaging yet they are mostly saddled with unrealistic dialogue and shameless cliches, and the rest of the characters are mere stereotypes. The film is strangely watchable but also devoid of real human emotion, and plus there is a tragic, unbelievable coda that negates most of the film's two hour running time. All in all, not terrible but too thin and cliche ridden to recommend to anyone, let alone three people.
E-mail me with any questions, comments or general complaints at Faust667@aol.com or at jerry@movieluver.com
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