Pay It Forward

Twelve-year-old Trevor's social studies assignment is to change the world. His system is simple: do not pay a kindness back, pass it to three people. What makes the film interesting is not whether the idea works but why the boy needs it so badly. His mother is an alcoholic and his father is gone. It comes from Catherine Ryan Hyde's novel. Screenwriter Leslie Dixon could not solve the book's multiple perspectives, so she reversed the structure, opening with the reporter who appears halfway through and tracing events backwards. Hyde liked it enough that she restructured her still-unpublished novel to match. Kevin Spacey plays the scarred teacher, Helen Hunt the mother, and Haley Joel Osment plays Trevor immediately after The Sixth Sense. On a 40 million dollar budget it took 55.7 million worldwide and opened at number four. Reviews were rough, leaving it at 39 percent, and Lisa Schwarzbaum in Entertainment Weekly called it reprehensible for its emotional manipulation. CinemaScore audiences gave it an A. Who it is for: viewers who like sentimental, instructive, openly optimistic films. Who it is not for: anyone who will question whether the ending was necessary. That objection holds; it reads as a choice made for effect.