"Think of an idea to change our world, and put it into action," is the mantra of Pay It Forward. Given as an assignment at the start of the 7th grade social studies class by Mr. Simonet (Kevin Spacey), he really doesn't expect any of his students to go out and change the world, but rather think about what they can do, and stimulate their minds. What he doesn't realize is that when Trevor McKinney (Haley Joel Osment) is challenged, he accepts the challenge and puts all of his efforts into it, so on his way home from school, he picks up a homeless man (James Caviezel) and gives him food, shelter, and money for clothes which then help him land a job at a motel. Trevor's idea is that if he helps 3 people do something that they couldn't have accomplished by themselves, he can change the world. Because by not having them pay him back, they have to help 3 other people, and so on. So after just 10 steps, you have 59,049 people helped already, but that's in a utopian society where everyone helps three others, and as we'll see, it doesn't always work out as planned.

After trying to help the homeless man, he turns towards his teacher, Mr. Simonet. Leading a mostly sheltered and lonely life, Trevor tries to hook him up with his mom, Arlene (Helen Hunt), a recovering alcoholic with an estranged husband (Jon Bon Jovi) that shows up every year or so to get drunk and beat her. Trevor's reasoning is that he can help both Mr. Simonet and his mom at the same time - Mr. Simonet being the strong, stable force in his mother's hectic, transitive life. His third project is helping a classmate by helping him keep from getting beat up. While both the homeless man and Mr. Simonet's tangents are explored in depth, the third project goes almost unnoticed for a good part of the film.

While we watch Trevor try and change the lives of three people, a benefactor of the 'Pay It Forward' movement 4 months in the future (it all works out) is trying to trace backwards the movement to find the person who started it all. So while we see both the start and the end of the movement, they seem to interact with each other throughout the movie and propel the story to its final conclusion.

The main focus of the movie is on the relationship between Mr. Simonet and Arlene as they go through some rough times dealing with different problems, and while this love story sub-plot is all well and good, it seems to take up too much of the movie and doesn't allow the other parts of the story to take their own path, but rather they are forced to develop in a short amount of time and the final result is rushed and not as interesting as it could have been.

There was enough good acting in this movie to go around as Haley Joel Osment has earned a little bit of resepect from me, as I could not stand him in The Sixth Sense. Both Hunt and Spacey give heart-felt performances and do a great job of moving the film along, as their part of the 'movement' is the most important within this film. While the acting was superb, the script seems to have fallen apart at the end. The ending tries to be overly emotional and could have been done without as it serves no purpose in the overall meaning of the film. I don't know if this is a result of the director, script-writer, or the original author of "Pay It Forward," but somewhere along the line, this ending leaves you with a foul taste after the rest of the movie does a great job to get the audience involved. With a better ending, the movie could have been much better, but nonetheless, this crowd pleaser beat all expectations I had and was an enjoyable film.

Genres: Drama, Comedy
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 110 minutes
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