Pay It Forward (2000)
Directed by Mimi Leder
Like some other kids, 12-year-old Trevor McKinney believed in the goodness of human nature. Like many other kids, he was determined to change the world for the better. Unlike most other kids, he succeeded.
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What critics compared Pay It Forward to
The debut screenplay from Grant Nieporte, whose previous credits includes three combined episodes of TV�s Sabrina the Teenage Witch and 8 Simple Rules, maintains its mysterioso Pay It Forward-like mentality for the first few scenes, but once those restraints are obviously lifted (no later than Ben signing a particularly titled form) it is still under the impression that its hiding from us in an effort to hammer home a resolution that is absent of any poignancy whatsoever and would be laughed off an episode of ER.
Smith’s reunion with director Gabriele Muccino (the far more tolerable “The Pursuit of Happyness”) is basically “Pay It Forward” meets “Babel.”
Beauty and the Beast is like Pay it Forward, only with unnecessary overreactions.
Or a much different take on “Pay It Forward,” which is welcome, as that movie was terrible.
After an altercation at New York's Grand Central Station, Prot (Kevin Spacey, Pay it Forward), a serene, gentle man who calmly explains that he is here visiting from the planet K-PAX, is taken to a Manhattan mental hospital and put under the supervision of Dr. Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges, The Contender), a soft-spoken, easygoing psychiatrist.
First with ''Pay It Forward'' and now with ''K-PAX,'' he has chosen to squish his big, complex talent into safe-movie containers -- into characters who are walking moral lessons, not just men (let alone slippery, cunning, deadly smart men who shouldn't be let out of our sights).
K-PAX, the second film Kevin Spacey�s made after his Best Actor-winning performance in American Beauty, is definitely an improvement over the horrendous Pay it Forward, but such a statement is the very definition of damning with faint praise.
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If you’ve never been exposed to Stand and Deliver or Dangerous Minds or Mr. Holland’s Opus or Dead Poets Society or Lean on Me or Music of the Heart or Finding Forrester or Pay It Forward or Take the Lead , then have at it: you’ll probably love it.
Adapted from a novel by Alan Glynn by Leslie Dixon (whose career, including Mrs. Doubtfire and Pay It Forward , is precisely as screamingly impersonal as it would have to be to result in Limitless), the film starts off on a whopping wrong foot: you know how supposedly, you can only use X% of your brain (the movie settles on 20%)?
Based on Alan Glynn’s novel, the screenplay arrives from the writer of such messes as “Pay It Forward,” “Loverboy,” “The Heartbreak Kid,” “Look Who’s Talking Now” and too many other awful movies to name.
With a resume of hit films such as Mrs. Doubtfire, Pay It Forward, along with the Hairspray and The Thomas Crown Affair remakes, Limitless shows her range as much as it does it’s star, Bradley Cooper.
Overlooked in "Pay It Forward" and wasted in "A.I.," Osment proves that he can do more than just play cute.
As Walter grows fonder of his uncles, Osment imparts a confidence and swagger that was only hinted at in such post- Sixth Sense offerings as Pay It Forward and A.I. Artificial Intelligence .