OxfordPress.com

Grade: C+

Verdict: Feel good - at least about this cast.

Details: Starring Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osment. Directed by Mimi Leder. Rated PG-13 for profanity, brief violence, substance abuse and adult themes. Two hours, 2 minutes.

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Review: What can you say about a highly touted feel-good movie that just makes you feel . . . OK?

Call it the "Simon Birch" Syndrome, in which a film with impeccable credentials and equally impressive good intentions doesn't quite hit the mark.

"Pay It Forward" has star power to spare: Academy Award winners Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt, plus Oscar nominee and last year's catchphrase champ, Haley Joel Osment. Further, the plot is an admirable attempt to say something positive about the effect we can have on others by choosing to do good.

But when it's all over, you may feel more manipulated than uplifted by director Mimi Leder and her gifted cast. Then again, if you truly believe life is a box of chocolates, you may not.

Osment plays Trevor, the wise-beyond-his-years son of alcoholic single mom Arlene (Hunt), who supports them by working as a cocktail waitress at a Vegas casino. On the first day of school, Trevor's new social studies teacher, Mr. Simonet (Spacey), hands his seventh graders an assignment: "Think of one idea to change our world, and put it into action."

Little Trevor, who must've boned up on Frank Capra movies over the summer, comes up with the Pay It Forward plan, a kind of good Samaritan pyramid scheme. Pick three people, do them a kindness and, instead of accepting a favor in return, tell them to "pay it forward," i.e., do a good deed for three others.

Trevor picks his mom, who's still hiding booze in the chandelier, his teacher, whose burn-scarred face hides deeper emotional wounds, and a homeless man (James Caviezal).

At first, his "I see good people" idea seems to go bust. But he's wrong. Out in L.A., a cynical reporter (Jay Mohr) is on the receiving end of a "pay it forward" favor and decides to investigate this chain letter of goodness built on the kindness of strangers.

Leder, one of the few female directors typically associated with action extravaganzas (like "Deep Impact" and "The Peacemaker"), clearly relishes the chance to tell a small, character-driven story. At its best, her movie radiates a touching, even refreshing, optimism. Unfortunately, Leslie Dixon's script soon laspes into preachy predictability, capped with an ending so shameless that it makes you wince rather than weep.

That leaves us with the performers, who, let's admit, are hardly leftovers. True, Hunt is essentially doing a shriller, mascara-smeared spin on her award-winning "As Good as It Gets" role. Ditto Spacey, who pretty much works a variation on his now-trademark sardonic persona. But they're both such skilled actors that they force us to care about their characters simply because they care about them.

As for Osment, he proves here that his much-lauded work in "The Sixth Sense" was no fluke. He has the sort of expressive face that makes us believe he sees things that others don't, be it dead people or the potential for good in any person.

That same potential for good is probably what these talented actors saw in the sappy script. Too bad "Pay It Forward" ultimately offers more potential than payoff.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Cox News Service