Pay It Forward

REVIEW
Good intentions may have paved that road to Hell, but it also accounts for some strange goings-on in Las Vegas. In this promising fable which is both heart-warming and overly dramatic, an outcast schoolboy named Trevor (Osment) invents "pay it forward" as a school project. What that means is you do something nice for someone, and they do something nice for 3 people, and they each do something nice for 3 other people, and so on -- it's a human chain letter with kindness as its own reward. One of Trevor's own acts is to play matchmaker for his waitress mom (Hunt) and disfigured schoolteacher (Spacey), an unlikely romance that is one of the weaker links in this uneven chain. Spacey is -- as usual -- excellent as the caring but (emotionally and physically) scarred teacher, but his scenes with Hunt (here doing a reprise of her As Good as It Gets character) lack the energy displayed with young Osment. In his follow-up to The Sixth Sense, Osment continues to amaze, giving a full-blooded portrayal of an adolescent wise beyond his years. There are scenes in Pay It Forward that genuinely touch the heart, and others that will turn the stomach; but the film could have come together as a whole had it not been for its awful ending.