Such promise, and such a premise. How "Pay It Forward" misses the mark is hard to pin down, but it just does.
That's not to say that Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osment, batting .667 as a group recently against Oscar, don't give effective performances. In truth, much of the movie's emotional punch comes from the three spending so much time together in front of the camera. These three are phone-book actors -- they could tie our stomach in knots reciting all the M's in the Vegas white pages. The studio got its money's worth there.
The problem is resonance. Gifted as they are, the three can't pull the film far beyond the vortex of a mundane love story. The concept of paying it forward, or doing three big favors to pay for one done to you, is cheapened and diluted by three stars and a subplot that suffocates this ethic with "Leaving Las Vegas" overtones. More of Angie Dickinson as Hunt's mother and James Caviezel as Osment's payee-gone-wrong. Less of the marquee players. That would have paid it forward to the audience.
Against the backdrop created by director Mimi Leder, the ending is deus ex machina, a way of extricating a mired plot and blithely refocusing on what was given short shrift for the previous 110 minutes -- the idea that a world-changing idea is certain to have its pitfalls, like life itself, but that it's worth exploring to the utmost.
Rating: 6.5 of 10.
That's not to say that Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osment, batting .667 as a group recently against Oscar, don't give effective performances. In truth, much of the movie's emotional punch comes from the three spending so much time together in front of the camera. These three are phone-book actors -- they could tie our stomach in knots reciting all the M's in the Vegas white pages. The studio got its money's worth there.
The problem is resonance. Gifted as they are, the three can't pull the film far beyond the vortex of a mundane love story. The concept of paying it forward, or doing three big favors to pay for one done to you, is cheapened and diluted by three stars and a subplot that suffocates this ethic with "Leaving Las Vegas" overtones. More of Angie Dickinson as Hunt's mother and James Caviezel as Osment's payee-gone-wrong. Less of the marquee players. That would have paid it forward to the audience.
Against the backdrop created by director Mimi Leder, the ending is deus ex machina, a way of extricating a mired plot and blithely refocusing on what was given short shrift for the previous 110 minutes -- the idea that a world-changing idea is certain to have its pitfalls, like life itself, but that it's worth exploring to the utmost.
Rating: 6.5 of 10.