Product Description

HOW MUCH IMPACT CAN ONE HEARTFELT IDEA HAVE? A JUNIOR-HIGHSTUDENT'S CLASS PROJECT IDEA IGNITES A CHAIN REACTION OFGOODNESS AND CONSEQUENCES. THE BOY'S IDEA: WHEN SOMEONE DOESYOU A FAVOR, DON'T PAY IT BACK, PAY IT FORWARD.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1710 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2001-05-15
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 123 minutes

Features

• Bonus: Behind The Scenes Documentary
• Bonus: HBO First Look The Making of Pay It Forward
• Bonus: Feature Length Audio Commentary By Director Mimi Leder
• Bonus: Cast Film Highlights
• Bonus: Theatrical Trailer

Amazon.com
Pay It Forward is a multi-level marketing scheme of the heart. Beginning as a seventh-grade class assignment to put into action an idea that could change the world, young Trevor McKinney (Haley Joel Osment) comes up with a plan to do good deeds for three people who then by way of payment each must do good turns for three other people. These nine people also must pay it forward and so on, ad infinitum. If successful, the resulting network of do-gooders ought to comprise the entire world. Trevor's attempts to get the ball rolling include befriending a junkie (James Caviezel) and trying to set up his recovering-alcoholic mother (Helen Hunt) with his burn-victim teacher (Kevin Spacey), who posed the assignment.

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

From The New Yorker
An embarrassingly ham-handed fable about doing good deeds, but worth seeing for Helen Hunt's first-rate performance as an alcoholic Las Vegas cocktail waitress and single mother-a woman with lousy judgment who wants to do the right thing but doesn't know how. As a classroom exercise, her son Trevor (Haley Joel Osment) devises the scheme of "pay it forward"-performing a gratuitous act of kindness for three people and then insisting that they do the same for three others. Trevor helps strangers, but, playing Cupid, he's more eager to help his mother meet his teacher (Kevin Spacey). It's a rum role for Spacey, who sacrifices his aura of malevolence by delivering an unconvincing, weepy confession fit for a TV movie. Written by Leslie Dixon, from Catherine Ryan Hyde's novel, and directed by Mimi Leder. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

FIVE HANKY TEARJERKER...
I found this movie to be a compelling and moving cinematic experience, with outstanding, well nuanced performances by Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, Haley Joel Osment, and James Caviezel. It is a bona fide tearjerker. Those who enjoy that genre of film should love this one.

The movie opens up with a hostage scene being played out in a residential neighborhood, with cops everywhere. A reporter arrives on the scene only to have the cops try and give him the bum's rush. While the cops are distracted by the reporter, the perpetrator leaves the scene in a sports utitlty vehicle, but not before crashing into and totalling the reporter's car. A mysterious stranger materializes and hands the reporter the keys to a new jaguar, saying that he is giving it to him, no strings attached, since he seems to have run into a little car trouble.

The movie then cuts to a scene four months earlier. The viewer is taken to a seventh grade class room where, in a wonderful scene, student, Trevor McKinney, played by Haley Joel Osment, takes his teacher's assignment of doing something that could potentially change the world to heart. His teacher, an intelligent and controlled man, played by Kevin Spacey, whose burn scarred face masks the scars on his heart, gives out this assignment cavalierly, not really expecting that any of his students will come up with something of real note.

It turns out that Trevor, intelligent and introspective, comes up with an idea whereby he performs a potentially life changing good deed for each of three people. They in turn each do the same for three people. He calls his idea "pay it forward". It is your basic pyramid scheme with a twist. Some of the things he does will tug at your heart strings. Some of them will tickle your funny bone. One thing is for sure, unless you are made of stone, you will be moved.

Meanwhile Trevor's stressed out mom, played by Helen Hunt, is a single parent, holding down two jobs. An alcoholic in the throes of a recovery, she does the best that she can. Split from Trevor's dad, himself an alcoholic who used to batter her, she is struggling to keep on even keel. When Trevor's execution of his teacher's assignment results in what appears to be a potentially life threatening situation, it causes his mom to hit the roof and go to the school, where she confronts the baffled teacher.

Ultimately, Trevor's mom and his teacher are brought together, through the contrivance of Trevor. What initially seemed impossible, becomes a reality, and a relationship blossoms. It turns out that they have more in common than was initially thought. Meanwhile, Trevor's plan is catching on, and a number of wonderful scenes in the film illustrate this.

What happens in this film will, at times, thrill and delight you. At other times, what happens will surely move you to tears. Some may call the movie manipulative and schmaltzy. It is simply just an old fashioned tearjerker.

I expected schlock, sugar and smaltz, not so! I LOVED IT!
What a pleasant surprise this movie was! I avoided seeing it for awhile because of so many negative or so-so reviews I'd read and also because a friend told me the book was "sentimental and corny". But the movie was very believable and I can't help thinking that the only people who could fail to be moved by it would have to be hard-core cynics. Haley Joel Osmont proves his acting chops yet again (after his acclaimed his role in Sixth Sense), playing a middle-school student named Trevor who has a troubled home life, an alcoholic mother and an erratic, wayward father. When his new teacher, played by the superb Kevin Spacey, gives an imaginative class assignment, daring the students to "change the world" Trevor takes his homework to a new extreme, changing not only his life but that of his teacher. While parts of this movie do challenge the viewer's ability to suspend belief and seem somewhat unreal, it is a rare treat to see such a trio of talented actors come together for such a worthy idea. Don't be surprised to find yourself reaching for the tissues while watching this movie. I came to it with negative preconceptions and reluctance and was surprisingly moved and heartened by watching it. This is one I plan to buy and add to my permanent collection, worth seeing again and again.

Pay It Forward Is Worth Your Money ...And Time
Trevor McKinney (Haley Joel Osment) is in his first day as a Las Vegas middle-schooler (7th grade) and his class is introduced to their new social studies teacher, Mr. Simonet (Kevin Spacey). And it's quite a stunning introduction, because Mr. Simonet has visible scars that run up his neck and onto his face. Are they burn scars?

Mr. Simonet engages his class from day one by giving them an extra credit assignment that the students can do throughout the entire school year: think of a way to change the world and put it into practice. Most of the students see this as just teacher hype, but Trevor takes it literally and starts putting an idea into play; he decides to do three incredibly nice but difficult things to three separate people (strangers) and then ask them not to pay him back, but to "Pay It Forward." His first is to bring home a homeless man where his mother, Arlene McKinney (Helen Hunt) finds him and pretty much freaks out.

The second thing Trevor does is to try and get his teacher, Mr. Simonet, into a relationship with Arlene, Trevor's mother. And as this unfolds we begin to see more of this screwed up microcosm of souls. Trevor's mom works two jobs (one waiting tables at a strip club and the other as a change girl in a casino), is battling alcoholism, and is trying not to turn Trevor into a latchkey kid.

Mr. Simonet begins to fall in love with Arlene but holds back for reasons unknown. Do those scars go deeper than the surface?

Trevor's third "Pay It Forward" attempt is to help prevent a fellow student from being beat up by the school bullies all the time. And this event will play a pivotal and surprising role in the end of the film.

Can a kid really teach everyone to "Pay It Forward"?

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There's an unforseen quality to this film that leaks out to the audience. After watching it with some friends, there were many differing takes on it:

"It's schmaltzy trash," one said.
"At least it's trying to get a valid message across without going into triteness," another commented.
"It's got too many religious overtones," someone else piped in.
"It had a lot of downers," said someone else.
"Really? I thought it was quite uplifting," said another.

As you can see from this cross section of comments, there's a lot going on in the film and I think this speaks pretty highly of how the message of the film (i.e., helping out strangers without any expectations of remuneration) was given to the viewer. This definitely is NOT a feel-good film. There's cursing and mild nudity and drug use and alcoholism and child abuse and even (gulp!) murder. But through these not-so-appealing items the film garners much of its strength.


And it's a message that really needs to be gotten across to humanity (especially around this time of the year ...which is to say, everyday).