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Kevin Spacey plays a schoolteacher whose assignment to taking action that will make the world a better place is taken to heart by his most obstinate student (Osment). The child has the idea of a pyramid where each person will help three other people to change something that he or she cannot do on their own; each person would then help another three people and so on. The film develops around the ramifications of the child's pyramid in parallel with the relationship that is struck up between his mother (Helen Hunt) and his teacher. The idea of the film is original and slightly provocative. Though this gratuitous generosity is shocking in a world obsessed by profit (confirmed by the success of TV shows like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and not Who Wants To Be A Do-gooder?), it also thumbs its nose at the ultimate symbol of greed: pyramid schemes. These structures, also known under the moniker MLM (Multi-Level Marketing), are a sort of organized swindling that offer the lure of making a profit from the work of others. This system generally pushes its members to turn to people they know to make them clients. Thus the film takes one of the most unhealthy aspects of capitalism and turns it around, swapping greediness for generosity. Pay it Forward follows the chain of events that the boy has set off and whose family also plays a part, all while erecting a satire of a certain social stratum of American society commonly known as white trash. The film constantly oscillates between emotion and humor and avoids sinking into melodrama and renders this mix of good feeling and social criticism as palatable. Here Mimi Leder's direction, better known for uninspiring stuff (The Peacemaker, Deep Impact) is more persuasive. She succeeds in fusing different themes together, alternating tones and intertwining stories to offer a fairly compact result to completely absorb the audience. The acting makes everything convincing. Spacey skillfully juggles between the self assurance of a teacher and the complex awkwardness of someone in love. Osment plays an intelligent and tenacious adolescent who nonetheless doesn't overdo it in the emotionally moving department. Helen Hunt is the real surprise, doing a good job in her role as an alcoholic but dignified mother. In the supporting roles, Jim Caviezel (The Thin Red Line, Frequency) stands out as a drug addicted homeless person with a spark of pride as does Jay Mohr, always iconoclastic, here in the role of a perplexed journalist who brings up all of the audience's possible objections. Pay it Forward also seems to be a distant echo of American Beauty. The opening scene surveying the neighborhood as well as the music directly reflects the film of Sam Mendes. In the same manner, one character sets off a chain of events that will affect everyone around him and endure the consequences. Like American Beauty, the film concentrates on a specific social class: here it's lower class Las Vegas as opposed to the comfortable suburban middle class portrayed. The major difference is that the message here is positive and looks to rise above while 1999's Oscar winning film slips into chaos. So Dreamworks offers a response to the pessimism of American Beauty, by offering a variation on the same subject. Though the film is appealing, it is far from having the breadth of its predecessor. Pay it Forward is a first degree film and simple in its conventional treatment of drama and comedy. The work is not perfect and certain scenes stumble onto very cheesy moments (see the overlong ending). Further, the script doesn't avoid certain clichés like alcoholic parents-abused children, juvenile delinquency, scars of a painful past. Yet one thing is clear: Pay it Forward has its eyes on the Oscars and after productions like American Beauty, Gladiator, Chicken Run, Almost Famous, Dreamworks seems to fulfill its dream for a better cinema.
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