First, let’s all agree that if the “Pay It Forward” chain-letter approach to good deeds caught on, the world would be a better place. May the movie and Oprah take the lead in convincing everyone to do their three bits of altruism, and let it be so. Amen.But “Pay It Forward” isn’t really about the power of this idea and how it spreads as much as it is the story of how an 11-year-old boy emotionally blackmails his scar-faced teacher into dating his alcoholic mom. It’s also an example of how a movie can emotionally blackmail an audience.
The boy, Trevor (Haley Joel Osment), is the one who devises the do-gooder scheme after his social studies teacher, Eugene Simonet (Kevin Spacey), begins the school year by asking his students to think of a way to fix what’s wrong with the world. Trevor’s idea is that each person should help three other people achieve something they couldn’t have done on their own, and then those people each must do the same for three more people. And so on and so on.
The first recipient of Trevor’s kindness is a junkie (James Caviezel) living amid rubble. The next two are Trevor’s teacher and his mom, Arlene (Helen Hunt), a Las Vegas strip-club waitress who is filled with such self-loathing that she guzzles vodka when she gets home.
Trevor figures that if the two of them get together, his teacher’s loneliness will be cured and his mother can find some stability. But really Trevor, an only child, is just as driven to get himself a new daddy; his father (Jon Bon Jovi) is an abusive drunk who is gone for months at a time.
You can’t blame Trevor for trying to improve everyone’s situation with a bit of creative matchmaking, but no one should confuse that impulse with selfless world reparation. Director Mimi Leder and screenwriter Leslie Dixon, who adapted Catherine Ryan Hyde’s novel, are playing a bait-and-switch game with the audience; it’s like they never figured out how to develop the original premise, so they shoot for the big, obvious emotions and hope viewers are too teary-eyed to see the inconsistencies.
The movie is as muddled structurally as it is thematically. It opens with an aggressive Los Angeles reporter (Jay Mohr) benefiting from a spontaneous act of kindness and then skips back four weeks to show Trevor in his first class with Mr. Simonet. The action continues to hopscotch between Trevor’s story and the reporter’s search for the origins of “pay it forward” without indicating what is happening when, so when the characters’ paths finally cross, you may think you’ve entered the Twilight Zone.
“Pay It Forward” has a lot going for it, starting with its high-octane cast. Enlisting Spacey was a canny move because his ever-grounded presence is reassurance that the movie won’t maximize its sap quotient; he’s like the anti-Robin Williams.
Spacey’s Eugene is a pessimistic idealist; just because he gives his class a change-the-world assignment doesn’t mean he expects them to follow through. He is inspired that a kid from a background as troubled as Trevor’s would retain such a strong belief in the power of goodness. Trevor, meanwhile, sees past Eugene’s occasional brusqueness and show-offy vocabulary to recognize that the teacher’s scars aren’t confined to his face.
Osment still has that beyond-his-years quality that worked so well in “The Sixth Sense.” It works here, too, though his performance is less surprising this time around; he need not accept any more roles that require him to shoot knowing glares at his stressed-out single mother.
Hunt doesn’t get showy during her drunk scenes and avoids giving the impression that she’s slumming as she portrays someone less intelligent than herself. Yet, thanks perhaps to Hunt’s overexposure as an actress or my own lack of imagination, I never quite lost awareness that I was watching a performance. Arlene’s interactions with Trevor come across as natural; those with Eugene seem more forced, perhaps because Hunt has to repeat some of that “As Good As It Gets” strident-mother attitude. At times Spacey and Hunt click as actors, but we’re never convinced that their characters fit together, aside from their shared love of Trevor.
In the harsh real world, Trevor might be forced to confront the sad fact that true love is more complicated than two people having mutual sympathies. “Pay It Forward” effectively plays on real-life tensions in some areas; the filmmakers are smart enough to realize that when Trevor brings a homeless man into his house, our likely reaction will be an uneasy mixture of admiration and anxiety. But when the topic turns to love or dramatic personal revelations, the movie turns to mush.
I have nothing against sentimentality when it’s earned. Leder’s doomsday comet movie, “Deep Impact,” was shamelessly schmaltzy, yet the tear-jerker moments fit the disaster-film context in a guilty-pleasure sort of way.
“Pay It Forward” is too high-minded to stoop as low as it does, particularly in its unforgivably manipulative ending. The movie pretends to be making some grand statement about an earth-shattering idea, yet the filmmakers lack the conviction to explore how it actually affects people.
The “movement” apparently amounts to little more than a string of strange coincidences involving a few stereotyped characters. Not only do we get Mohr’s obnoxious reporter, who mellows in scenes that must have been trimmed, but the sole significant black character is a jive-talkin’ thief. (In the book the Spacey character was African-American.)
The collision of a child’s ideals against the world’s realities is a potent topic, as the movie shows early on. Trevor feels betrayed when things go wrong. By the end of “Pay It Forward,” we share the feeling.
`PAY IT FORWARD’
(star)(star)
Directed by Mimi Leder; written by Leslie Dixon; based on the novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde; photographed by Oliver Stapleton; edited by David Rosenbloom; production designed by Leslie Dilley; music by Thomas Newman; produced by Peter Abrams, Robert Levy, Steven Reuther. A Warner Bros. release; opens Friday. Running time: 2:04. MPAA rating: PG-13 (mature thematic elements including substance abuse/recovery, some sexual situations, language and brief violence).
THE CAST
Eugene Simonet ………….. Kevin Spacey
Arlene McKinney …………. Helen Hunt
Trevor McKinney …………. Haley Joel Osment
Chris Chandler ………….. Jay Mohr
Jerry ………………….. James Caviezel
Ricki ………………….. Jon Bon Jovi
