Pay It Forward
Gets back at Critics!

Emphatic as they are, makes it laughable to know how much these detractors have missed the point!
 
 

Haley Osment as Trevor explains the simple yet  powerful scheme that may really change the world.

You have heard the concept before.  You receive an e-mail or a letter in the mail regarding a great new opportunity - you send one dollar to seven addresses and they will send one dollar to seven others, and so on.  Before you know it, you will make thousands of dollars a month.  The idea forms a chain or a pyramid strategy, hence, chain letters.

Similarly, when a character does you a good turn, don't pay the favor back.  Instead pay it forward by doing a kindness for three other people.  Be sure you tell each of the three other people to do something for three more.  Pretty soon, following a geometric progression, the whole world becomes a better place.

The film "Pay It Forward" was attacked by some critics for they believe people nowadays have become just too damn cynical.  This remarkable little movie dared to assume that humanity isn't evil, selfish or ugly and, in a time when Christian Bale's "American Psycho" is all the rage among the critical establishment.  With its very idea in question, Pay It Forward the film, surely took some flack for it. 

All the critics who reviewed the film generously gave their acclaim to the film's three central performances who did extremely well:  Kevin Spacey as the vulnerable and wounded man; Hellen Hunt as the woman no less wounded in her own way, and Haley Osment, who once more proved himself the equal of adult actors in the complexity and depth of his performance.  Unfortunately however, film critics were heavily divided when it came to grading the film as a whole and this prevented any of the three worthy cast from getting any Academy nominations. 

Many people would like to make it clear now if the categories of the Academy, or any other award giving body, are independent of each other.  Isn't it the reason why there are so many categories in the Academy-- or any other award giving body-- is so that anyone who is really worthy would be at least nominated even if all the rest of the aspects regarding the film are all sloppy?

Chicago Sun Times' Roger Ebert wrote Pay It Forward's idea fails because it is "a seductive theory, but in the real world, altruism is less powerful than selfishness, greed, nepotism, xenophobia, tribalism and paranoia."  He challenged, "If you doubt me, take another look at the front pages." He wasn't the only one who had that opinion hence, the film will go down on record as a film that was brilliantly acted, but was a drama that was a dramatically inaccurate.  Admittedly, the idea is not a terribly realistic concept.

A. O. Scott of the New York Times reviewed the film as "baldly manipulative and emotionally counterfeit."  Paul Tatara of CNN Showbiz, at the pedestal of his moronic arrogancy said, "It has to be the most oppressive 'feel good' picture in movie history." Boy, there really must be something wrong with the Pay It Forward idea.

First and foremost, most common question among the reviewers is, "Just how do we interpret 'do something for someone else?'"  This is more of a common sense query that makes the Pay It Forward idea seem very idiotic.  True enough, if you give up your seat in the subway car to an elderly person, you're doing good, right?  And if that person who just assumed your seat says a really pleasant "Good Morning" to a neighbor, he's also doing something good.  The problem is that just about everyone does something that benefits another person every day, and yet the world is still not a utopia.  Now, the critics who had this smart alec reproach hit the nail right on the head right away, right?  Not by a long shot!

They may have accurately observed the most minute detail of the film but they carelessly neglected what they should have looked at first.  The very idea behind Pay It Forward -- that when someone does an enormous good deed for you, you should pay it "forward" to three other, unsuspecting persons.  "Enormous" here means the good deed has to be something "hard for you to do."  A simple "Good Morning," hardly qualifies as hard at all.  Better still, these have to be favors that the other people "can't do for themselves" -- certainly not a minor proposition!

One critic sarcastically wrote that, "For every moment of true poignance and effectiveness in the film, there are three that ring with a resounding falseness that stops the whole picture in its tracks."  Others called parts of the film, as well as the film as a whole, "implausible" and even "absurd."  But then again, as Eugene Novikov of the Ultimate Movies sharply reiterated, they need to watch the film again and realize by how much they have missed the point!

Some critics concluded that Pay It Forward is a good movie that could have surely been a great one if the producers had "had the guts to present reality as it.  They did not present reality as it is?  On the contrary, hadn't they presented too much of the reality to that it drove the idea's originator to the edge, fighting, trying his best to the point of painfully accepting that it just doesn't work? More so, do these critics mean that the payoff in film itself depended on the result and that has to be the failure of Trevor's idea? Now, that's what's really manipulative and overwrought!  Mind you, the more of the so-called "reality" inserted in the film-- to emphasize that the idea doesn't work-- the more "unrealistic" will it become!  For the world is not as totally paranoid as what some critics so emphatically declared.

Even if the grade of the movie depended on the failure of the idea, Haley Joel Osment as Trevor himself, at the end, did not believe Pay It Forward would work!  Notwithstanding the fact that the reporter told him that there already is a Pay It Forward movement.  He humbly confessed that he himself couldn't make it work!  He said it's just too hard and people are just too scared.  So, what more about the reality are they asking for?  Did anyone among the very intelligent detractors of the film listened, remembered and understood what he had said?

The real and straightforward reason the idea does not work is because it feels like a rip-off!!  Plus whose to say that people will follow through and pay it forward?  The film Pay it Forward wants people to believe that people repaying acts of kindness for kindness done upon them can work if you make them believe in the idea.  But how many people are genuinely kind enough to follow through with such a plan?  Do people want to be forced to act kindly? 

It's interesting to watch people get suspicious and angrily shout, "I didn't ask for your help,'" when strangers offer to go out on a limb.  Let's all take a closer look into the film.  In the opening scene of the film, the reporter, (played by Jay Mohr) whose car was bulldozed, was really stunned when a lawyer gave him a Jaguar for free.  He wondered why was the lawyer so generous to him.  Is there a movement going on out there -- a movement involving a daisy chain of sudden, random acts of kindness -- and if so, how did it start?

When the lawyer's daughter had an asthma attack and was ignored in an emergency room, the gun-waving African-American stabbing victim whom himself, was being prioritized first by the nurse, forced the nurse to give the kid oxygen.  He was arrested for his action but he was able to save the life of the girl.  When the lawyer asked him how he could ever repay him, he told him to pay it forward.  Thus, that was how the reporter got himself a free Jaguar.

In that story, the lawyer was "forced" to pass on a hard kindly act.  But to put it more accurately, he "chose" pay it forward due to the fact that he simply could have not.  One might say that the lawyer was just genuinely kind enough to do what he was told to.  What if he wasn't?  In real life, far too many people would take advantage of the first part of the idea without doing the next.  Shouldn't it take someone who is really genuinely kind enough to follow through with such an imposition? 

Yes, someone who gives his Jaguar for free certainly has to be genuinely kind enough.  Now listen here:  If you were placed in a position like where the lawyer was when he was about to lose his daughter and somebody helps out, you have to believe that you WILL be genuinely kind enough.  You really have to experience being in that kind of situation.  Only then will you really believe.

Trevor's first attempt was when he tried to help an outcast man.  While in the process, he wanted to know if his idea would work by checking on the man if he would indeed keep his end of the deal, but the man avoided him.  So, he concluded that the man won't be paying it forward and his first attempt was a failure. At least that was what he thought.  He was wrong and never did he knew it.

But how anyone can just say they're a changed person and the film failed to fully detail this.  For example, the man did saved the girl's life but you still never believe he's about to become the next Mother Theresa of the ghetto as he claims he would be.  In fact, he didn't, for he became selfish enough to tell the reporter that Pay It Forward was his idea.  That's correct but nonetheless, he still made that selfless act when it counted most.  And isn't that what really mattered?

The very idea behind Pay It Forward requires what is described in the film as "an extreme act of faith in the goodness of people."  Idealistic?  Yes.  But it is more erroneous to forget it is also common nature to eventually repay someone who does a good deed for you.  Just what if, that very act of kindness led you to, instead, pay that very good will to three other people-- under the condition that they will do the same for three more-- won't this make this world just little bit more perfect? 

Pay It Forward is indeed, a rich experience, smart, courageous and bracingly powerful.  Its message is unabashedly positive but it's not cuddly or cloying. As Jay Carr of the Boston Globe puts it, "The film is likewise admirable simply for the way it squares its shoulders and plunges into a message of unfashionable idealism."  It is honestly and unabashedly driven by its own earnestness.  Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times was certainly more in tune with reality than some of his contemporaries when he commented that, "the combination of restrained writing and direction and top-of-the-line acting is enough to make even confirmed agnostics want to believe in this unashamed fairy tale." 

Those who criticized the film made all made it sound like in reality not even one out of the 6 billion people in the world would pass-on a good deed.  Their authoritative assumption is disgustingly frightening.  There are even some who critized the similarity between Trevor and Spacey's character when he was a child-- they both had dads who beat-up their moms.  Is that too much of a coincidence?  Don't they have any idea how common broken families are these days?  Yet they accused the film as detached from reality.

The overwhelmingly earnest quality of the film did in fact, dared the audience to be cynical. Susan Wloszczyna of USA Today who said that the concept "scores a direct hit to the reflexes," was clearly more knowledgeable about human nature than the film's detractors.   This was unfortunately because those critics are already filled-up with cynicism that it wasn't just peeking through them but unblushingly pouring out.

If there's something in the film that may justly deserve enough criticism, it is the sudden twist near the end of the film that comes out of the blue. Surely, not even the cynical detractors of the film sat through that scene unaffected.  Perhaps, this was the real reason why some of them chose not to like the film.  Because, come to think of it, just like the rest of the story, it could actually happen in reality.  To some degree it was necessary to "complete the film."  But it still was not funny.

"Pay it forward" is a great idea and one that could easily be put into practice in the real world if people were willing to give it a chance and swallow their pride.  Why do humans think of personally helping the less fortunate as a humbling and embarrassing duty?  It's one thing to write a check to charity, it's a much different thing to volunteer your time and actually perform labor in the name of kindness and goodwill.

Sometimes don't you wish you could once again see the world through the eyes of  a young boy like Haley or Trevor?  To be in that state where everything is new and wondrous.  To be ignorant of the ongoing trials, tribulations and the appalling things that humans are capable of doing to one another.  Not burdened by past experiences or a deeper awareness of daily life, a child's simplistic and innocent outlook is a thing of beauty to be admired by adults who wish we didn't know some of the things that they do.

Tired, frustrated and self-absorbed, some adults have come to accept the way things are and refuse to take action wrongly thinking that even the smallest of circumstances are beyond their control.  Children, however, still believe in the "power of one."  In their minds, there is no limit to that they can do or achieve.
 
 

 

Critics' consensus on the whole film:  Pay It Forward,  manipulative but worthwhile for the performances Critics' unanimous decision:  Haley Joel Osment does a very good deed for upbeat Pay It Forward