movie review by [click on photos Studio Movie
| Two decades later, her beloved best-seller, Pay It Forward, hits the big
screen with a couple of Oscar-winning actors (Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt)
and an underaged nominee, Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense). The script took only 14 months to
traverse the Hollywood grapevine. Executive producer, Jonathan Treisman, was
so moved by Hyde's unpublished manuscript, he cried. Director Mimi Leader
gave the project the green light after her 13-year-old daughter read the
story and begged her to shoot it. That's why these moral-minded grown-ups
made sure their movie received a PG-13 rating, so families could watch it
together.
The pay-it-forward notiona pyramid scheme for kindnesshas caught on with
mural-painting, carol-singing middle school kids in New York's inner city. It
has sparked do-gooders, such as Doris Eakes, to donate a 4.2 million dollar
trust to several small colleges. These random acts of selflessness may not
seem like Tinseltown material, but the Frank Capra syndrome continues with
this self-conscious weepie, which attempts to gloss over a myriad of
modern-day worries including substance abuse, domestic violence, teenage
gangs, homelessness, and battered souls.
"Think of an idea to change our world and put it into ACTION," reads the
blackboard on the first day of school. That's a tall order, think Mr.
Simonet's surly seventh-graders…all except saintly Trevor (Haley Joel Osment,
playing another pint-sized version of the Everyman). He comes up with a
big-hearted plan that requires an "extreme act of faith in the goodness of
people." Or perhaps, as sourpuss Mr. Simonet suggests, a Utopian society.
At home, little Trevor has scant reason to believe in such things. These concepts
belong in dictionariesnot his desolate backyard (part infertile California
desert, sun-baked the color of terra-cotta, part candy-tinted neon swank: a
visual metaphor that the camera milks all too often). His mom, Arlene, a
booze-chugging floozy (Helen Hunt, braving a bleached-out poodle perm and
busty, Brockovich ensembles) waits tables at a topless bar, when not sneaking
swigs of Vodka. Meanwhile, her lonesome son is
bringing over his friends, like the furry hobo with a drug problem (James
Caviezel, sporting the same haunted POW look that he wore in the Thin Red
Line), and cranky, self-contained Mr. Simonet (Kevin Spacey with a little
extra padding and a wardrobe that consists of interchangeable cardigans), a
social-studies teacher with a face full of zipper-shaped scars.
Where did Mr. Simonet get his horrible burns? And why is Arlene terrified of
her ex-husband (who happens to be Jon Bon Jovi, though that's not the reason)?
Naturally, the filmmakers have cooked up post-Freudian explanations to
these pertinent questions in place of three-dimensional characterization. Bad
fathers make good villainsespecially when they pop up after long, convenient
absences (it's called a "plot point," for those who study screenwriting).
Additional touches of crude sentimentality feature a bag lady granny who
lives out of her car (Angie Dickinson), a couple of knife-wielding junior
high brats who repent for their sins, and a romance between two beasts who
transform into beauties. A tedious subplot involves a frazzled journalist
(Jay Mohr) in search of the otherworldly origins behind Pay It Forward, which
he deems a "movement." The trail takes him to a jive-talking jail inmate (a
movie-of-the-week scenario that goes nowhere). Just when the pre-fabricated
scenarios couldn't get any soapier, the movie pulls a final, nasty trick on
its audience while a folksy ditty about angels warbles in the background…all
for the sake of provoking something called an emotional response. Yes, sad
endings can feel as false as happy ones.
Inspirational redemption is a high stake for any film, especially one based
on a book that has launched its own "chain letter of kindness," as the
chairman of Tapestry Films, J.P. Guerin, has christened "Pay It Forward." Do
good deeds belong in the money-grubbing hands of Hollywood movie moguls?
We're supposed to sympathize with these hackneyed characters. Instead, they
come across as melodramatic stick figures, short on credibility (not to cast
blame on the actors, who manage a few moments of sincerity, particularly when
silent). They deserve so much better, as does their audience. Mr. Simonet was
wrong. It doesn't take a Utopia to make "Pay It Forward" worknot if that
perfect world only exists for two hours.
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