Pay It Forward Film Review
Giovanni Sealy
Someone does you a good turn. You pass it on to three other people. They pass it on. And what a wonderful world this will be. That's the theory behind "Pay It Forward," a movie that might have been more entertaining if it didn't believe it. It's a seductive theory, but in the real world, altruism is less powerful than selfishness, greed, nepotism, xenophobia, tribalism and paranoia. If you doubt me, take another look at the front pages.
Consider Las Vegas, the setting of the movie. If every person in trouble there paid it forward to three more people, there would be more Gamblers Anonymous members than gamblers. An intriguing premise, but not one that occurs to this movie--although Alcoholics Anonymous plays a supporting role and paying it forward is of course the 12th step.
The movie has its heart in the right place, but not its screenplay. It tells a story that audience members will want to like, but it doesn't tell it strongly and cleanly enough; it puts too many loops into the plot, and its ending is shamelessly soapy for the material. Two or three times during the film I was close to caving in and going with the flow, but the story lost the way and I was brought back up to the surface again.
Haley Joel Osment, the gifted young actor from "The Sixth Sense," stars as Trevor, a resourceful latchkey kid whose father has disappeared and whose mother, Arlene (Helen Hunt), works two jobs as a Vegas cocktail waitress. She's a recovering alcoholic with a few relapses still to go. At school, Trevor is impressed by the grave, distant presence of his new teacher, Mr. Simonet (Kevin Spacey), whose face is scarred by burns.
Mr. Simonet doesn't want to win any popularity contests. "Do I strike you as someone falsely nice?" he asks Trevor. "No," the boy replies thoughtfully, "you're not even really all that nice." But Trevor responds to the lack of condescension in the teacher's manner: Mr. Simonet has standards and applies them in the classroom. On the first day of school, he writes the year's assignment on the blackboard: Think of an idea that could change the world. Trevor thinks. Things happen in his life to help him think and guide his thinking, and before long his mother discovers that a homeless man (James Caviezel) is living in their garage. It was Trevor's idea to invite him in. Then he can pay it forward.
There are complications. One of Trevor's theories is that his mom and Mr. Simonet would both be a lot happier if they were dating each other. Mr. Simonet does not agree. Spacey does a wonderful job of suggesting the pain just beneath the surface of the character; the teacher's life is manageable only because he sticks to his routine. But Trevor plugs away, all but shoving the two adults toward each other. This is, unfortunately, the kind of self-propelling plot device that, once allowed into a movie, takes it over and dictates an obligatory series of events. Since it is self-evident that Trevor is right, we know with a sinking feeling that the screenplay must detour into tentative acceptance, hurt rejection, silly misunderstandings, angry retreats, confessions, tearful reconciliations and resolutions, all in the usual order.
The movie intercuts between the predictable progress of the romance and the uncertain progress of Trevor's pay-it-forward scheme. We meet various supporting characters who get involved in paying it forward, and the time line is not always clear. The movie opens with one of those off-the-shelf hostage crisis scenes that ends with a criminal crashing into a reporter's car, and a stranger giving the reporter a new Jaguar. He's paying it forward. Then we flash back to "four months earlier" and Trevor's first day of school, but soon we're back to the present again, as the reporter tries to track down the pay-it-forward stories, and the lawyer who gave away the Jaguar tells why.
This leads to another flashback: When the lawyer's daughter had an asthma attack and was ignored in an emergency room, he explains, a gun-waving African-American stabbing victim forced a nurse to give the kid oxygen and told him to pay it forward. It's an effective cameo, but it's awkward the way the movie cuts between scenes like that, Trevor's own setbacks and the tentative romance.
With a cleaner story line, the basic idea could have been free to deliver. As it is, we get a better movie than we might have, because the performances are so good: Spacey as a vulnerable and wounded man; Hunt as a woman no less wounded in her own way, and Osment, once again proving himself the equal of adult actors in the complexity and depth of his performance. I believed in them and cared for them. I wish the movie could have gotten out of their way.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi picks up immediately from where its predecessor The Force Awakens left off, but its attitude and intent could hardly be more different. The Force Awakens had an almost slavish reverence to the past, but The Last Jedi elegantly unburdens itself from such reverence in order to stake out its own identity and explore the grey-er shades of war, failure, and the stories we tell ourselves and each other.
Where The Last Jedi could have easily fallen to such a dreary, ponderous place is in Rey's storyline, in which the young adept seeks guidance from the exiled Jedi Master Luke Skywalker. Far from being the spirited hero we knew, he has been eroded by time, shame and regret. Mark Hamill is simply wonderful as this different Luke Skywalker, and it's difficult not to feel a huge rush of affection the few times Hamill drops the surliness and reveals hints of the bright-eyed young Skywalker who redeemed his fallen father and saved the galaxy. Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley, along with Hamill, make for a fascinating and psychologically troubled trio upon which an entire fate of a galaxy depends.
Due to some moving and gentle prodding from an old friend, Luke teaches Rey the ways of the Force. The first lesson is in getting Rey to open her senses to the interdependent forces holding everything together; the peace of a creature feeding its young and the crashing ocean waves that claim their lives; the hideous rotting carcass beneath the dirt nourishing sunlit fields of plenty: life and death. At the centre of this symbiosis is a gaping maw of darkness that beckons, which could be linked to the mysterious connection between herself and her dark rival Kylo Ren. It's the first of a handful of stunning sequences that communicates Star Wars' motifs in exciting new ways. Rian Johnson doesn't just push the larger story forward to uncharted territory, he elevates Star Wars' visually leaden slant to dizzying poetic heights at times. This scene is a microcosm of what makes The Last Jedi a unique standalone entity within the series. We're far from Liam Neeson explaining the Force in stilted scientific terms to Jake Lloyd, that's for sure. Look as well to a sequence, you'll know it when you see it, where a sacrifice is a silent scene rendered as cosmic majesty. A planet that bleeds as the setting for an intense final battle is the icing on the newness.
Though it's thematically necessary, a slapstick-y detour to a Casino setting undeniably hurts the film's almost perfect pacing and tone. Nonetheless, I loved The Last Jedi. I loved its willingness to go to places that will surely anger legions of fans, I loved that it deepened the charismatic archetypes by exploring their hurts and haunts with deftness and humour, and I loved that Carrie Fisher saved her best for last.
Despite the fact that far more time is spent on issues like alcoholism and spousal and child abuse rather than showing more of the positive ramifications of the idea of "paying it forward," the idea of practicing random acts of kindness is discussed and sometimes shown.
Inspired by a social studies teacher who encourages his students to be aware of the bigger world beyond their school and neighborhood, 7th grader Trevor McKinney develops the idea of "paying it forward," a way for people to practice random acts of kindness and to make the world a better place. Trevor's social studies teacher is a tough but fair teacher who encourages his students to try and understand the world around them, and also encourages them to build their vocabulary.
Character mortally wounded, stabbed to death, blood. Bullying -- boys knock down, kick, punch, and throw a boy into a dumpster. A mother slaps her son hard in the face in a moment of anger. A man talks of the physical abuse he received from his father, which resulted in the burn scars on his face and chest. A woman stands on the edge of a bridge on the verge of committing suicide. A man shatters the window of a store and steals a radio. A woman pulls a shotgun on a homeless man her son has let sleep in her garage.
Characters struggle with drug and alcohol addictions. A woman who is trying to stop drinking hides bottles of vodka in her house and drinks when stressed. Beer and alcohol drinking in bars. Marijuana smoking. A character is addicted to heroin, with track marks on his arm. Cigarette smoking.
Parents need to know that Pay it Forward is a 2000 movie in which Haley Joel Osment plays a 7th grade boy who, inspired by his social studies teacher, comes up with a way for people to practice random acts of kindness, which he hopes will lead to the world becoming a better place. This movie has frequent profanity, including one use of the "N" word, as well as a tween boy who calls one of his bullies "a fag." Many of the characters abuse alcohol and drugs, including heroin and marijuana. There are references to severe domestic abuse. There are some fights, one resulting in mortal injury. A character attempts suicide. Another shoots his gun, though no one is injured. A character dies tragically. References to a boy's mother sleeping around, especially when drunk. There's a scene in which a woman is on top of a man in bed, starting to take his shirt off. A character's burn scars may be upsetting. Teens may be especially concerned by the violence that occurs at a school, despite the metal-detectors kids walk through as they enter. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails.
c80f0f1006