Pay It Forward

Great movie. One of my favorites.

This is a good movie. Good message. Watched with my children and just had to skip one scene.

Wish I would have seen it when it came out back in the day. Good storyline.

Heart wrenching, great movie.

This is a very good movie. I watched it many times and continue watching it. Happy to have this movie.

Beautiful movie. Some parts made me cry.

I viewed this sometime ago, and only remembered the ending -SPOILER- that the little boy died somehow, but as ahero, and though he didn't get to see it, his effort actually snowballed and a lot of people were both helped anduplifted! Seeing it the second time, I felt aghast at the VERY real problems which were presented. I'm guessing I was glossing over them because of the cute little boy( Haley Joel Osment), and because I love happy endings and "PAY IT FORWARD" sounded happy. The flaw is that people who seem to need a lot of help DO need a lot of help, but the help has to be in much mentally/emotionally better shape than the addict/depressed/suicidal person, AND the latter has to be able to use that help to step by step, build his/her courage and strength, and face the really terrifying content that is driving the addition and fear. I repeat that - the really terrifying content..... so a person has to confront the real battle of chemical addiction and then face often time childhood trauma when we are SOvulnerable and especially need attention, care, love, understanding and attunement from healthy adults to what's alive in us. Whew! If you have read this far, you are probably guessing my background and yes, it took me a looong time to be able to actually face the many facets of my home life, and be able to accept and understand them, and start to be authentic. I'm still in the process.Remember when something would happen and Helen Hunt would run around the house, tearing open cupboards and doors and laundry looking for her bottle? I understood how potent was the pain triggered and that she just HAD to get calm again, or turn it off. And the little boy (Osment) still had some freedom emotionally, but he so, so, wanted this new idea and his new teacher to make the world SAFE for him again, so he could feel stable, notthreatened, and grow. Sadly, he did not have anyone to encourage him to listen to his body's highly intelligent fearof that older kid with the knife. Remember at the beginning of the movie, he rescued his buddy by just walking him away!!! I wowed his courage to do that! It was really smart, because if you fight back, that's when the bigger guy with a more dangerous weapon is likely to react by hurting you badly, even killing you. But the second time,he blamed himself and abandoned his buddy, instead of taking a bit of time, and seeing if he could create a diversion and/or just drag his friend so they could run away - maybe at the expense of losing his bicycle, but remaining alive as a better prize. So, he needed guidance from an adult in that case, to understand his fear WAS valid and sensible, but that there might be a different way to solve the problem than direct confrontation. That would have been a pretty easy thing for Kevin Spacey, the teacher, to do, I think. Maybe.When the father came back, my stomach tightened and heart felt sick. He had 6 month's of sobriety and thoughthe was "all better." Yuk. And Helen Hunt went right into trying again, because when you are a child, with a child'simmature nervous system, you know you can't survive without the parent(s) who are your sole means of survival,so that "training" is deep and engrained.What might have worked would have been that the mom take a year and stay in her group, mind the cautions, stay off the alcohol, still see the teacher, but be friends, face the husband, work through that need to take him back, getthe divorce, shore up as many healthy friends as she can, bring as much happy times as she can when they present themselves, and give the teacher time to respect her struggle and get used to what she has to face - maybe even get in a trauma group himself. Of course, that is not magic, it's a lot of struggle and you have to find a group thatdoesn't mostly mirror your very makeup, so you can observe healthy interactions. This sounds hideously unrealistic, but, have you seen the documentary RBG (Ruth Bader Ginsberg)? I wrote down what she said about hermother so I could get a feel for it: her mom loved her, was always caringly following through and being there to help if need be, on what she, the mom, had given her daughter to do. And she repeated endlessly, words of strength and encouragement - over and over, until she died when Ruth was graduating from high school. So justimagine instead of seeing your mom be drunk, or beaten by your dad, or silent when you were being mistreated:constant words and feelings and scenes of disrespect, anger, fear, and pain that never gets talked about, resolved and changed, you had what you needed to feel that who you are is worthwhile and loveable, every day? At the veryleast, you might just pick people who needed help and who had enough inner strength to benefit and pay it forward or at the least NOT pick someone whom you knew was too much to take on. Knowing when to say "no"is just as important as knowing when to say "yes." Right now I'm living that very challenging lesson, and may I come out with the right answers that work for me, which may be different answers than someone else on their journey.

This movie Gahh best movie ever