Pay it Forward | | Director: Mimi Leder
Actors: Kevin Spacey, Haley Joel Osment, Helen Hunt, Jay Mohr, James Caviezel
Studio: Warner Home Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.98
Buy Used: $1.21
as of 7/31/2010 18:00 MDT details
You Save: $13.77 (92%)
New (33) Used (79) Collectible (2) from $1.21
Seller: meowgoodness
Rating:  333 reviews
Sales Rank: 4880
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Region: 1
Discs: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Running Time: 123 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.5 x 0.5
MPN: WARD18877D
ISBN: 0790756803
UPC: 085391887720
EAN: 9780790756806
ASIN: B00005B4BI
Theatrical Release Date: October 20, 2000
Release Date: May 15, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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.
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
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 333
 Great movie July 2, 2010
M. MacKenzie (Southern Indiana)
This was a tearjerker, but well worth it! The price was unbelieveable. It is a warm and good family show with a great message.
Great Movie June 5, 2010
Emma Emmons
This movie is all-inspiring, and makes you think...wish that the world could be more like it.
ONE OF THE BEST MOVIES YOU WILL EVER SEE April 23, 2010
JENNIFER
THIS WAS AN EXCELLENT MOVIE. THE STORY WAS GREAT, AND THE PERFORMANCES BY KEVIN SPACEY, HELEN HUNT, AND HALEY JOEL OSMENT WERE OUTSTANDING. DEFINITELY WORTH WATCHING AGAIN AND AGAIN.
 wrong format for Europe March 25, 2010
Thorvaldur Orn Arnason (Iceland, Europe)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'm sorry, I can hardly use the copys I got because it is NTC. I thought the Amazon-staff would know that Iceland is in Europe and we use Pal-format on our DVDs.
Get ready to cry... March 2, 2010
Andrew Ellington (I'm kind of everywhere)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This movie is pure sentimental saccharine schmaltz, in the line of Ron Howard yet not as effective or as expertly handled, but I still gobble it up like it were peach cobbler and sob like a baby who lost his binky. I mean, this movie is simultaneously forced and honest, and that is thanks to the splendid acting and the contrived script.
The base prose for `Pay it Forward' is quite simple. A young kid with bid ideas finds that his new teacher has motivated him to put into play a plan that could alter the face of the world. Asked to come up with an idea that could change the world, young Trevor decides that if he were to do something to help three people and those three people helped three other people (and so on and so forth) then the world could be a better place for everyone. Trevor immediately sets his sights on his mother, an alcoholic struggling to take care of her son, and a junkie in need of a fresh start.
Where the film goes wrong, for me, is in trying to make too much of this `idea'. The idea should have been a metaphor for what young Trevor was experiencing at home, in his life, struggling to find something better and pay himself forward so-to-speak. The film tries to go that way in parts (the natural development of his mother, played brilliantly by Helen Hunt, is one thing this film nails) but the way it handles the phenomenon that this idea became kind of relinquishes the effect it should have had to a mere punch line. It loses a lot of its weight and emotional power by spreading it too thin.
Yes, the ending is crafted for the sole purpose of bleeding your tear ducts, but I wouldn't have changed it.
The best thing about this film is, by far, the performances. Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osment have all been better, but that doesn't mean that they don't work this material over very well here. Osment has to kind of carry the film, for he needs to sell us on his childlike innocence as well as his matured sense of understanding, and he does so beautifully. Kevin Spacey is an actor who I really like, a lot. He manages to take a gimmicky character (burn victim/inspirational teacher) and make him human (that whole "my father" scene just broke my heart). But, just like in `As Good As It Gets', best in show awards can be showered upon only one person, and that is Helen Hunt. She is outstanding as Trevor's emotionally unstable mother. Her frailties are beautifully tempered by her overly assertive sense of strength. She tries so hard and yet falls so far, and it is seen all over the creases in her face.
The film is as schmaltzy as they come, and it doesn't try to hide that fact. It is designed to do one thing, make you cry, and it does that with ease. I would have loved this subject to have been dissected and tackled with a little more earnest grit (and honest realism), since the performances truly deserved it, but in the end I am more than satisfied with the way this film pans out.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 333
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