'Pay it forward' was on TV last night...you may recall it at the time as being Hunt-Spacey-Osmont's peak of their career cash in...I think it didn't do very well at the time....but * me its sad...
Reviews for the film were generally mixed, although Spacey, Hunt, and Osment's performances in the film were universally praised. Rotten Tomatoes rated the film with 40% based on 127 reviews with a consensus saying, "Pay It Forward has strong performances from Spacey, Hunt, and Osment, but the movie itself is too emotionally manipulative and the ending is bad." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times gave the film 2.5 stars out of a possible 4 stating, "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: Spacey as a vulnerable and wounded man; Hunt as a woman no less wounded in her own way, and Osment, once again proving himself the equal of adult actors in the complexity and depth of his performance. I believed in them and cared for them. I wish the movie could have gotten out of their way." Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum gave it a "D" grade, calling it "reprehensible" for using "shameless cliches of emotional and physical damage" and then "blackmailing audiences into joining the let's-be-nice 'movement'"[5] in order to be transparent Oscar bait.
Reviews for the film were generally mixed, although Spacey, Hunt, and Osment's performances in the film were universally praised. Rotten Tomatoes rated the film with 40% based on 127 reviews with a consensus saying, "Pay It Forward has strong performances from Spacey, Hunt, and Osment, but the movie itself is too emotionally manipulative and the ending is bad." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times gave the film 2.5 stars out of a possible 4 stating, "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: Spacey as a vulnerable and wounded man; Hunt as a woman no less wounded in her own way, and Osment, once again proving himself the equal of adult actors in the complexity and depth of his performance. I believed in them and cared for them. I wish the movie could have gotten out of their way." Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum gave it a "D" grade, calling it "reprehensible" for using "shameless cliches of emotional and physical damage" and then "blackmailing audiences into joining the let's-be-nice 'movement'"[5] in order to be transparent Oscar bait.
