New This Week
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Awards & Bests By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

63 11th Hour, The
47 27 Dresses
29 Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
39 Alvin and the Chipmunks
81 Bamako
84 Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
47 Bella
68 Business of Being Born, The
69 Charlie Wilson's War
64 Cloverfield
30 Cover
68 Delirious
92 Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
43 Final Season, The
41 First Sunday
51 Golden Compass, The
49 Good Night, The
65 Great Debaters, The
63 Hannah Takes the Stairs
52 Hollywood Dreams
7 Hottie and the Nottie, The
60 I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With
15 In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
81 Juno
70 Lars and the Real Girl
47 Lions for Lambs
41 Mad Money
71 Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)
xx Moondance Alexander
53 Music Within
77 Nanking
44 Nina's Heavenly Delights
24 One Missed Call
74 Orphanage, The
30 Over Her Dead Body
39 P.S. I Love You
37 P2
46 Reservation Road
55 Resurrecting the Champ
57 Romulus, My Father
85 Savages, The
78 Starting Out in the Evening
83 Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
57 Teeth
92 There Will Be Blood
38 Trailer Park Boys: The Movie
32 Untraceable
63 Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
68 War Dance
71 Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, The
43 Youth Without Youth

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Pay it Forward
Warner Bros.


5.5

based on 34 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 17 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for mature thematic elem

Starring Haley Joel Osment, Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, Jay Mohr, James Caviezel, Jon Bon Jovi, Angie Dickinson, and David Ramsey

Eugene Simonet (Spacey) is a social studies teacher who teaches his class that it is possible for one person to change the world. When one student (Osment) really listens and believes, the ripples begin to be felt by others in his life and the idea starts to spread across the nation.

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Catherine Ryan Hyde (book) Leslie Dixon
DIRECTED BY:	Mimi Leder
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: May 15, 2001 Video: May 15, 2001 Theatrical: October 20, 2000
RUNNING TIME:	122 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Boston Globe Jay Carr

The kind of film you've got to admire simply for the way it squares its shoulders and plunges into a message of unfashionable idealism.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Another gutsy, big-budget movie that dares to say something new and optimistic about our messed-up times. And it almost, but not quite, brings it off.

Variety Todd McCarthy

An unusual film that intelligently avoids numerous potential pitfalls even if its central earnestness is ultimately inescapable.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

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.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

Heavy-handed, saccharine message somehow goes down good.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

It's a pretty nice movie until, like a Ponzi plan, it collapses.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

With a cleaner story line, the basic idea could have been free to deliver. As it is, we get a better movie than we might have, because the performances are so good.

USA Today Susan Wloszczyna

Either you will weep uncontrollably during the final 10 minutes or so of this bittersweet fable...or the urge to gag will be overwhelming.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

More of a sales pitch than a movie.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

Works unexpectedly well for its first three quarters.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

You'll enjoy this sentimental drama if you feel good intentions are their own reward, at least where movies are concerned; but it'll exasperate you if you want your entertainment to have some connection with the world we actually live in.

Film.com Robert Horton

Spacey and company deserve better.

San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham

Has all the elements of a satisfying movie except knowing when to stop.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

My rule of thumb for manipulative movies: I don't mind playing the marionette as long as the strings aren't visible.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Winds up making a very good case for never going out of your way to help anybody.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

There's no faulting this movie's Capra-esque concept, equal parts optimism and sad recognition of the world's intrinsic harshness, but its manipulative execution may rub you the wrong way.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

There's the world-alteringly scary possibility that (Leder) might be trying to kill us with a star-studded "After School Special."

Chicago Tribune Marc Caro

Too high-minded to stoop as low as it does, particularly in its unforgivably manipulative ending.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

It's too bad about the ending because, until then, Pay It Forward... is Hollywood feel-goodism at its best.

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

Despite being full of Oscar-winning talent, this is still just a better-dressed, drawn-out episode of "Touched by an Angel."

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

Feels more TV movie-of-the-week than Oscar contender.

Film.com Sean Means

Tragic and phony, and proof that a contrived sad ending can be as bad as a contrived happy ending.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

It's so enamored of its own upbeat view of human nature that it expects you to overlook its stick-figure characters, its creaky plot machinery and its remorseless assault on your tear ducts.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

(Leder's) camera won't sit still long enough to complete a scene and tell a coherent story, skittering all over the map until you're dizzy from all the degrees of separation and spurious connection.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

Baldly manipulative, emotionally counterfeit melodrama.

Slate David Edelstein

Had enough grit to scratch its way through my cynical defenses, at least until its grotesque ending. But that capper isn't an aberration -- it's the logical extension of the movie's grandiose ambitions.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

The truth is that this programmatic Christian parable is pretty unbearable--glib, often myopic, and reeking with sentimentality and self-pity.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

At its core, a very manipulative piece of work.

Time Richard Schickel

As rigged as a casino slot machine, preying on people's hopes but paying off only for the house.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

No wonder Arlene (Hunt) keeps a bottle of vodka in the chandelier. You would too with this demonic, passive-aggressive, New Age munchkin (Osment) trying to run your life.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Pushes and pushes and pushes the emotional throttle without respite.

Newsweek David Ansen

If this is what Hollywood considers serious, important filmmaking, maybe the movie industry should stick to the low road.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Crass manipulation can clean up at the box office, so do your part: Nail this flick as a bottom feeder and pay the bad word forward to three others.

Village Voice Dennis Lim

An overflowing septic tank of chicken-soupy sanctimony that proceeds from casually offensive hypocrisy to wretchedly inapt religiosity.

The average user rating for this movie is 5.5 (out of 10) based on 17 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Pat C. gave it a 1:
Starting with a noble core premise, this movie proceeded to make me want to hurl.

You Are, Are You Not, Gilbert Mulroneycakes? gave it a 3:
First up, I have no idea what James B is talking about, but it doesn't seem to have much to do with this film. Second up...I hate it when people complain about movies that "manipulate the audience". All movies - all good movies - manipulate the audience. A bad movie is one that doesn't provoke any reaction whatsoever. (Also, people keep saying it about genuinely moving films such as ET, apropos of nothing, but that's another story). But here comes "Pay It Forward", which doesn't manipulate the audience so much as make balloon animals out of them. That I give it yellow rather than red is down to four individuals: the Space, HJO and Helen Hunt, all of whom give brilliant performances, all of whom are completely wasted on the material (cf the big scene between the Space and Hunt seven minutes before the end - people talk like that now?). The fourth is Mimi Leder, a talented director, who wastes one of her best days at work on a screenplay that's predictable and irritating in roughly equal measure - and then infuriating right at the end. Now, despite the fact I wouldn't wish this script on anyone, I don't want to spoil it, so I won't. But that they did THAT to THAT particular character, just so they can have that song and that bloody long-distance shot ending and that whole final five minutes is just wrong. Like the CGI deiscated kid in Beyond Borders, who was just window dressing for the romance between Clive Owen and Angelina Jolie's Lips. So on balance, I've changed my mind - it's getting red anyway. And if the book has the same ending, I ent reading it. What a waste.

Lawfully Awd gave it a 10:
Not quite as good as the book, but the acting was fantastic.

James B. gave it a 3:
It is hard to disagree with most of the hard knocks given to this movie, but I think it is strange that There Goes My Baby or Apocalypse Now are not considered manipulative or contrived by these same critics. Die Hard isn't a mendacious hunk of blubber and sentiment? Oh, yes, you guys think Ayn Rand is a philosopher AND a good novelist. Well, you would-be John Galts should check out what that hardbitten Nora Ephron has to say about your little phony idol. Pay It Forward is simplistic, and so on, but no worse than that familiar old Spencer/Hayek/Friedman/ Rand song and dance that so mists the eyes of the corporate "revolutionaries." The trouble is, concerning both, that the factitious is easy to spot in entertainment, and not so easy to recognize in current world affairs. Now eat all your market savvy!

Ryan M. gave it a 0:
I wanted to spit in Mimi Rogers face for putting such fine actors in what I can easily say is one of the worst abominations of film I've ever seen.

Amy gave it a 10:
Beautiful.

Matt M. gave it a 9:
Touching, inspiring, filled with amazing performances. Excellent direction and script. Pulls off a stunningly bravado ending with guts.

Pay it Forward Warner Bros.

Pay it Forward
Warner Bros.