Product Details

• Actors: Kevin Spacey, Haley Joel Osment, Helen Hunt, Jay Mohr, Jim Caviezel
• Directors: Mimi Leder
• Writers: Catherine Ryan Hyde, Leslie Dixon
• Producers: Jonathan Treisman, Mary McLaglen, Paddy Carson, Peter Abrams, Robert L. Levy
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• VHS Release Date: October 23, 2001
• Run Time: 123 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (332 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00005BK5U
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #145,281 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

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

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

85 of 93 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FIVE HANKY TEARJERKER..., July 1, 2001

By 

Lawyeraau (Balmoral Castle) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Pay It Forward (DVD)

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.

32 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I expected schlock, sugar and smaltz, not so! I LOVED IT!, May 24, 2001

By 

K. Corn "reviewer" (midwest, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Pay It Forward [VHS] (VHS Tape)

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.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We now have a formula to create a better world., September 25, 2005

By 

El Solaris RP (SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE Singapore) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pay It Forward (DVD)

I will not bore you with the storyline as other reviewers have already touched on that.

If making the world a better place for everyone is important to you, then definitely watching this movie is something you would like to do.

The idea is to help three people in need and when they ask you what do you want in return, all you have to do is tell them that they will not want to do it. Of course, this is reverse psychology and the more you say they will not want to do it, the more they will want to do it. When they pester you for an answer, you then tell them that they have to helped three other people in return. This strategy is called "Pay It Forward". The word Forward meaning instead of paying back the favour to the person who helped you (who has been helped before by others)they will find three other people to return the favour. They do not have to do it, but they will definitely want to do it, because they have been helped unselfishly and it truly is a pleasure to help without asking for any reward in return.

That I believe is the message of this movie. To be touched by someone who has helped you without asking anything in return, because the helper has also been touched by someone who helped him without asking for anything in return, and it goes on ad infinitum.

Is it really an attempt to create utopia? I believe that inside everyone, there is goodness, even in the most hardened heart, and we can unlock this beautiful person when we touch him, when we helped him when he is at a vulnerable point in his life, when he/she was truly crying out for help. 9/11 and the tsunami has shown that humanity is ready to emabrace this idea to alleviate pain and suffering and helped one another.

It is not about giving people fishes and making them dependent on us, it is also about teaching them how to fish for themselves. That is not the issue, the issue is doing something for others without any ulterior motive, because nobody is going to monitor you if you do not continue the idea of helping three people. There is something appealing about doing it out of a pure desire to help without asking for anything in return, simply because you have been on the receiving side before and you somehow have faith that the person that you have touched, is going to continue touching others, lighting one heart after another.

Remember, what goes around comes around. We reap what we sow.

Others compare this formula with pyramid selling or multi level marketing. Although the multiplying effect is similar, Pay it Forward is not similar in intent to pyramid or multi levelmarketing. There is no intention to benefit when one pays it forward.

Three cheers for Pay It Forward and three cheers for the movie Pay It Forward.

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