Take power of one, add complications, stir and stand back
By
MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal Arts Writer
Movie credits and review
Faith in the goodness of other people is what sparks
Pay It Forward,
a Capra-esque kind of movie about the possibilities alive in every little person on the planet to change things for the better.
Help your fellow man.
Be all you can be.
They sound like ideas printed in church bulletins or on recruitment posters.
But that's the nub of a social studies assignment written on the chalkboard at the start of a new school year that little Trevor McKinney (Haley Joel Osment) takes to heart: "Think of an idea to change our world -- and put it into ACTION." It's an assignment that Eugene Simonet (Kevin Spacey) makes every year to his seventh-grade class, although not one student has ever been able to fulfill it. Until now.
Trevor, an introspective boy with the gravity of a missionary, comes up with a plan that, once put into ACTION, changes his life, his mother's life, Eugene's life and the lives of countless people he'll never meet as "Pay It Forward" spreads like an underground movement across the nation. Pay It Forward is Trevor's plan for good. Do a good deed for three other people and have the others "repay you" by doing good deeds for three other people . . . preferably strangers. The plan grows exponentially, like a pyramid scheme -- from 3 to 9 to 27 to . . .
It's a utopian dream, but
Pay It Forward
isn't simple enough to suggest that something like this would easily work. There are no easy Hollywood solutions and the film is not a total fantasy. It's on firm ground in the way it looks at the complexities and crises of non-traditional family life today.
For one, Trevor isn't having much success with Pay It Forward . . . or so he thinks. His first attempt at saving the world is through a homeless man (James Caviezel) whom the boy brings home, feeds, clothes and gives a place to sleep . . . much to the surprise of Trevor's mother, Arlene (Helen Hunt).
Arlene has her own problems. She's trying to hold her little corner of the world together by working two jobs at Las Vegas casinos while battling alcoholism. She's still pining for her mysteriously departed, abusive, bad-influence husband. A homeless man, with needle-track marks in his arms is not what Arlene is expecting to find when waking up one morning.
Trevor's good deed sends his mother swooping down on Eugene. Their classroom confrontation is ill-timed and unfortunate for both. But Trevor, who hates his father for the heartbreak he has brought his mother, sees Eugene -- solid and caring and kind -- as a lighthouse in a stormy sea, his last best hope. Arlene resists. Eugene resists. Because of old burns that have left his face scarred, he's standoffish. But eventually Trevor's sensitivity and his wise-beyond-his-years sensibility bring them together.
The plot sounds straightforward and fairly icky. But
Pay It Forward,
which is based on Catherine Ryan Hyde's novel, unearths hurts and secrets and probes the souls of its tortured characters who desperately need love, but are either afraid of it or are looking for it in all the wrong places. The romance at the film's heart is painstakingly paced and seems to travel the same ground more than once. But
Pay It Forward
keeps attention alive with its dynamics, running forward and backward from present to past and back again.
It begins in present-day Los Angeles at a crime scene where a young reporter (Jay Mohr) becomes the startled recipient of a Pay It Forward kindness. Intrigued, he begins to dig deeper, discovering others who've been touched by the "movement." He attempts to trace it backward to its source, who is Trevor.
The film flits back and forth between the present-day reporter and what went on in Las Vegas four months earlier at the start of Pay It Forward, following it until it becomes a movement and, finally, the reporter and Trevor meet. It's not difficult to follow, even though two stories are unfolding concurrently.
Director Mimi Leder's work on such TV series as
ER
apparently prepared her for this carefully plotted, sometimes deliberate drama, although her previous films -- the colliding comet movie
Deep Impact
and the nuclear bomb thriller
The Peacemaker
-- gave no indication that she was the person to guide something as heartfelt as
Pay It Forward.
The heat-it-up, cool-it-down romance between Arlene and Eugene is played like an emotional roller coaster by Hunt and Spacey. Hunt looks drawn, haggard and cheap, a not-quite-recovered alcoholic who has gone to the brink and is trying to claw her way back to make a life for her son. It's a role far removed from the calm, sure-of-herself golf pro she plays in
Dr. T and the Women
, and underscores what a fine actress she is and what tremendous range she has.
Arlene is low-rent and knows it, realizing that she's not in Eugene's educational league. He regularly writes unusual words on the chalkboard -- "variegated," "inquietude" -- to send his students to the dictionary. It has the same effect on Arlene. But she comes to love his honesty and his sincere interest in her son's -- and eventually her own -- well-being. And she feels that if anyone can help her understand Trevor, it's Eugene. Hunt makes Arlene a weak woman who is open to the possibility of change.
Eugene, who teaches his students the philosophy of the possible, is a welcome change from Arlene's loutish husband (singer Jon Bon Jovi) who makes his inevitable return one day promising that he has rehabilitated himself, but quickly slides back into the old ways of drink and abuse.
Spacey builds a complex character of many fears and secrets, slowly peeling away the armor to show how deeply wounded and longing his character really is. He's matter-of-fact with his students; low-key with Arlene at first. As he gets more involved with the lives of Arlene and Trevor, he pulls away, hiding the reason until the truth surfaces in a wrenching scene that Spacey and Hunt mine for all its pains and frustrations. Yet because Eugene is so reticent for so long, the chemistry that should be there between him and Arlene is curiously on low simmer, the only big hole in the film.
Osment, an Oscar nominee for the eerie
The Sixth Sense,
makes a determined, thoughtful Trevor, playing him close to the belt. When things get nasty, Trevor withdraws within himself in his room. Yet he's precociously sweet and naively idealistic, which makes him appealing and real. He's a kid who has seen a lot, but still has hope.
Good, too, is Angie Dickinson, sans makeup, as a homeless woman who holds a key to the Pay It Forward movement's origins.
Although
Pay It Forward
turns melodramatic with its punchline, it heads home solidly, ending in a magical moment that, like the story itself, offers hope.
****
Pay It Forward
Starring
: Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, Haley Joel Osment, Jay Mohr, James Caviezel, Jon Bon Jovi, Angie Dickinson.
Producers:
A Warner Bros. release written by Leslie Dixon from the novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde, directed by Mimi Leder.
Playing
: Harbour Mall, Holiday, North Dartmouth Mall, Providence Place, Showcase North Attleboro, Showcase Seekonk Route 6, Showcase Warwick and Stonington cinemas.
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