November 5, 2000 -- "Pay it Forward" is an idealistic tale about a young boy who changes the world because he has the courage to trust the better angels of human nature. It reminds me of a 1987 film called "Amazing Grace and Chuck." It is also reminiscent of "Grand Canyon."

Trevor McKinney (played by Haley Joel Osment of "The Sixth Sense"), challenged by his seventh grade teacher, Eugene Simonet (well-played by Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey, who, with this role tips the scales of Karma the opposite way they were tipping with the sinister "American Beauty"), comes up with a scheme to change the world for the better. His plan is called Pay it Forward. He performs an act of heroism or great kindness for three people. They, in turn, are asked to help three more people, and so on. Pretty soon, math takes over and the world is a better place.

He gives shelter to a homeless man and then tries to find a husband for his alcoholic mother, Arlene McKinney (played by Oscar-winner Helen Hunt of "As Good As It Gets"). He finds that the plan is not going as he expected, but his acts of kindness have repercussions far beyond what he imagines. Ripples of kindness start radiating from his home in Las Vegas, of all places.

This sounds like a Capra movie, but it has a much darker edge to it. Hunt, who is outstanding in this film, displays the classic symptoms of alcoholism and battered wife syndrome, with baby-faced Jon Bon Jovi as the batterer. She wakes up from her benders with a gaunt and tortured look. Spacey plays a man deeply scarred in more ways than one, withdrawn into a deeply set routine of behavior designed to shelter him from emotional risks. Spacey's performance is what you would expect of an actor of his calibre. Osment, who was nominated for an academy award earlier this year, once again proves he is the best actor of his age group. His acting style is natural and he shows endless range.

The structure of the movie, with loops of time tightly coiled within each other, gets in the way of the storytelling to a degree. The movie's point of reference, flashing forward and backward in time, gets a little annoying. The idea is to have story threads that start separately and converge at the end. This structure is not very polished. Making the leap from one story thread to another would be more palatable if the story threads themselves were more interesting and compatible. Seeing a movie like this gives one new appreciation for the absolute mastery of this form of storytelling shown by Quentin Tarantino in "Pulp Fiction."

While the level of storytelling is not great, the acting certainly is. Also worthy of note: Former bombshell Angie Dickinson plays Grace, Trevor McKinney's homeless wino grandmother, and Jay Mohr of "Jerry McGuire" plays TV reporter Chris Chandler. Mohr does a good job showing the determination of a reporter to get to the bottom of a story and at the same time holding out some hope that he is discovering something really wonderful. This story is not all peaches and cream. There are some tough things in this movie, but it also holds out some hope for all of us. This film rates a B.

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