PAY IT FORWARD

2000

Like good chili and lasagna, this film gets better as time passes! Immediately aftrer seeing it, I thought that it might be a 4-Star film, but as we left the theater and started talking about it, I realized that there was no reason not to give it 5-Stars. Similar to a Robert Altman film, and this year's "Magnolia," it has multiple story lines running parallel to one another until they all come together in a shattering climax. These plots are acted by a superb ensemble of actors, starting with three Oscar winners(Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, and Haley Joel Osment,) and with excellent support from Jay Mohr, Angie Dickinson, and Jon Bon Jovi. All are perfect in their roles. Director Mimi Leder keeps it all together. The idea of "paying it forward" begins with a 7th-grade teacher, who passes it on to his class(especially one impressionable student.) You must do a good deed for a stranger who in turn, will "pay it forward" by doing a good deed to three other strangers. Sort of a human chain letter. The idea is to change the world and make it a better place. Not a bad idea...let's do it!

5 Stars

NJB

Haley Joel Osment, in his first role since SIXTH SENSE, plays a bright and optimistic 11 year old who comes up with an idea for making the world a better place. An extra credit assignment by his teacher, played by Kevin Spacey, Osment decides he will change the lives of three people, one being his alcoholic mother played by Helen Hunt. Spacey and Hunt are excellent as always, but Haley struck me as overly melodramatic and annoying. Its a very nice story with a good moral to it, but you really need to believe in what is happening, but some parts I just wasn't buying. I enjoyed how the story is told, simultaneously telling the story from the beginning and the middle and nicely interweaving the two giving you different viewpoints. You don't have to be paying too close attention, however, to see parts from so many other movies in this one- it gets a little overwhelming. Overall, I liked this one and if you're a glass-is-half-full kind of person, you should, too.

3.5 Stars

CDF