Pay it Forward

Today's word of the day: overrated. You're going to be hearing it a lot from me, in sentences like: Helen Hunt, the overrated television actress. Haley Joel Osment, the overrated child actor from the most overrated movie of all-time. (The Sixth Sense) Mimi Leder, the overrated director of such forgettable films as The Peacemaker, and Deep Impact. And most recently, the director of Pay it Forward, a film that has plenty of oscar buzz, but will never, ever take home a statuette. Actually, I take that back -- just two years ago, a travesty took place when Shakespeare in Love beat out Saving Private Ryan for best film. So who knows...

But getting back to the word of the day. Does it apply to Pay it Forward? Not only does it apply, it redefines it. Pay it Forward is the story of a disfigured school teacher (Kevin Spacey), his student (Haley Joel Osment) and his alcoholic, struggling to survive mother. (Helen Hunt) Spacey gives the kids an extra-credit assignment: to change to world. Osment concocts an idea that if you help out three people, and each of those then in turn helps out three more people, you'd have a chain reaction of sorts that might make the world a little less shitty. Predictably, one of these 'good deeds' involves getting The Man Without a Face to hook up with Erin Brokovich. Ah love...

Okay, right to the point. This movie stinks. I enjoyed it moderately during the first hour, but as soon as it ended, it really started to piss me off how blatantly it was pandering to the average moviegoer's weakness for shameless, sappy, foreshadowed-from-five-miles-away ending. Beyond that, the script was weak, and the talented cast wasted. I've never seen Spacey so bland or boring. Jay Mohr shows up (in the future, no less -- a chronology device that left most of the audience scratching their heads for the first hour) and plays basically the same Jay Mohr character you'd expect in any movie. This time around, an annoying reporter. Jim Caviezel plays a bum whom the kid helps, and we see him pay it forward later on, but his scenes made me cringe with bad writing, and also for their utter randomness in the plot. His most dramatic scene in the movie comes out of nowhere and totally disrupts the flow of the movie. Jon Bon Jovi, actually an underrated actor in my book, is totally wasted with about 2 minutes of screen time, as the stereotypical drunk, wife-beater wearing, n'er do well father.

So why do I even give this 2 stars? I don't know. For effort maybe. This movie is obviously trying to fill the void left by last fall's far superior films like American Beauty and Cider House Rules. The music was even scored by the same guy who did American Beauty to give it that same new-age vibe! Should you see this movie? Sure, you may like it a lot. Two of my friends dug it, and two hated it. Mimi Leder gets some props for extending herself beyond genre pictures, but while artistic, this just missed the mark with me. I think this movie's gonna come through like a bad cold -- it'll be the talk of the country for a couple weeks, then six months from now, no one will even remember it. Call it the Truman Show effect.

- Ultra Magnus