Pay It Forward

Pay It Forward (2000) starring Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, Haley Joel Osment, Jay Mohr. A social studies teacher (Spacey) gives an assignment to his class, in which Trevor (Osment) is a student. The assignment is to do something to change the world, and when Trevor brings a homeless man home with him, Trevor's mother Arlene (Hunt) goes ballistic. Unfortunately, Arlene is also an alcoholic who keeps bottles of booze hidden around the house. The movie was disappointing to me because it failed to follow through enough on Trevor's "Pay It Forward" idea, while at the same time the ending was needlessly downbeat. This was a near miss, but it didn't quite work. Good subtitles and captions. Grade: B-