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PAY IT FORWARD, as Subtle as an Axe in Your Skull

© Lisa Marie Cramer

The concept PAY IT FORWARD is this: you do really big favors for three people and then those three people do favors for three other people. In theory this concept is merely farfetched. It’s the movie this concept is based in that’s made me decide it’s completely impossible.

Meet Trevor (Haley Joel Osment, Oscar nominated actor from THE SIXTH SENSE), an eleven year old boy who’s obviously bright. He’s the one to blame for Pay It Forward. His teacher Eugene (two time Academy Award winner Kevin Spacey) gives his social studies class an extra credit assignment every year to come up with an idea to change the world. Eugene isn’t much better off. His body is covered in burn scars. Worst of all, Trevor’s mother Arlene (Helen Hunt, Oscar winner of AS GOOD AS IT GETS) is an alcoholic who can’t keep her promise to stay on the wagon.

Trevor starts Pay It Forward himself by taking in a homeless heroin addict, fixing up Arlene and Eugene, and trying to protect a boy at school from a knife-toting bully. Unfortunately, the addict goes back to heroin, Arlene takes back Trevor’s abusive father, and the boy at school still gets beaten up. But this is a “life-affirming” movie, which means that unbeknownst to Trevor the heroin addict goes out into the world and starts his favors, and Arlene Pays It Forward as well, which spawns “the movement.” A reporter (played by Jay Mohr) is given a new Jaguar from a lawyer and starts traveling back through people trying to find the source of “the movement” until he gets to Trevor. As I’ve said, it’s a “life-affirming” film, so even though Trevor finds out he has changed the world, something bad has to happen. I won’t spoil it for you. Just make sure you don’t miss your cue to cry at the end.

One of the greatest failings of PAY IT FORWARD was it’s inability to make Arlene a sympathetic character. Arlene is one of the worst female characters I’ve run across in some time. Alcoholism aside, when she finds out that Eugene’s school assignment is the reason he’s invited a heroin addict into their home she goes straight to the school and yells at Eugene. Later, Trevor orchestrates a romantic meal for them to share. While Eugene is speaking to her in his intelligent manner she becomes defensive and asks him to dumb his vocabulary down. Finally, at the pivotal moment of the film, after everyone thinks Eugene and Arlene have finally got it together and fallen in love, Jon Bon Jovi shows up and ruins everything. He plays the alcoholic and abusive father Trevor begs Eugene to protect him from. Arlene goes to explain to Eugene why she has to give Jon Bon Jovi another chance and Eugene lets her know, in no uncertain terms, that he thinks she is a weak and stupid woman. That would have been the golden moment of the film if Eugene hadn’t finished his condemnation of her and gone straight into a poorly acted speech on how he got his scars. It is impossible for me to have any sympathy for a woman who is that much of a moron.

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