13 NOVEMBER, 2000: At long last, a movie for all those jagoffs with the ‘Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty’ bumper stickers. ‘Pay It Forward’ is a movie with so many great moments that it’s a shame it’s not a great movie—but it isn’t, and worse of all, it doesn’t know that. The film is so preoccupied with being full of good intentions and lofty ideals that it doesn’t realize that, as an entertainment, it’s ultimately full of shit. And that’s a shame, because there’s some fine performances and good stuff being shoved to the back by the movie’s ridiculous agenda.

Here’s a short list of what’s wrong with the movie:

-The whole “pay it forward” notion, as an idea and as it is portrayed in the film, is corny and ridiculous and ultimately not the least bit believable. Color me cynical or color me a pessimist, but don’t give me a Jag and expect me to do anything more than roar off laughing like a fuckin’ loon. Nothing having anything to do with this touchy-feely idea works in the entirety of the movie, aside from Kevin Spacey’s opening monologue, which only really works because Spacey delivers it. Jay Mohr is a good actor, but he gets the thankless job of chasing down the origin of the pay it forward idea in some kind of confusing alternate timeline thing. This whole subplot slows the movie down because we, the audience (remember us?) know where the idea started—so what the hell’s the point?

-Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, and Haley Joel Osment all deliver excellent performances, and the scenes that deal just in Osment trying to fix up his white-trash mom with his scarred, bitter teacher are quite good. In fact, by the end of the movie, you start to get mad that they put all the other feel-good garbage in there, since the makings are firmly in place for a tough romantic drama about two people actually working at a relationship (there’s a new idea for a movie—a story where romance doesn’t come easy).

-Jon Bon Jovi appears in a supporting role.

-Bon Jovi plays Osment’s real dad, a role is foreshadowed heavily, and disposed with as soon as he is no longer needed. We’re told that he’s a violent, abusive alcoholic, but Hunt simply decides that he’s not staying, and that’s all the movie needs. Hmmm, do you think maybe the aftermath of that decision should have been dealt with?

-Thomas Newman is the best composer working in movies, and was apparently instructed here to replicate his ‘American Beauty’ score as closely as he could without simply lifting entire cues from the previous film.

-Just when you think the movie is ending, they tack on what may be the worst ending to a major motion picture since—well, ever. They earn some emotional response before then, but the ending is a cringe-inducing cheap shot; it’s a director putting a gun to your head and screaming, ‘CRY, GODDAMNIT!’. I have a tendency to resist that sort of button-pushing. It’s completely out of left field and completely out of tone (except the tone of a desperate, messy movie that will do anything to make it’s thirtysomething female audience sob), and the whole thing just plain sucks out loud. The last five minutes of the film basically amounts to the filmmakers and cast patting each other on the back and snapping each other off for making a ‘moving, important’ movie. Go to hell.

-The last shot of the movie is stolen so blatantly from ‘Field of Dreams’, I half-expected Spacey and Hunt to start tossing a baseball around.

Director Mimi Leder is competent enough; she’s technically sound, and make a good-looking hollow film. Screenwriter Leslie Dixon’s quote, way back when she wrote ‘Outrageous Fortune’, about researching screenplays by reading what’s selling, still floats through my head whenever I see her name attached to a movie, and her script feels like recycled parts slapped together to create a marketable tearjerker. Hey, Leslie, try writing something resembling real life instead of resembling other movies.

‘Pay It Forward’ is a movie that tries to hard and accomplishes too little. The girl I saw it with loved it and reported that there was a lot of sniffling in the ladies room afterwards. Her favorite movie is ‘City of Angels’. So there you go.

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When I originally posted this column, I used this space to comment on a review of my last film's soundtrack by a fellow 'SEEN' columnist. More than anything else, what set me off about his remarks was that they were in a publication that we both write for, and I found the use of a forum that we're both a part of to be unprofessional and disrespectful.

Here's the problem: When I posted that, I didn't realize that the main page of SEEN ONLINE links directly to this page. So, by placing those comments here, I had done exactly what I was pissed at him for doing. Oops.

So, I'm removing those comments from this page. I will wrap up this little controversy in a more appropriate forum, and if you care enough to wanna read about, then you probably know what forum I'm referring to. Check it after the holidays.

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Shame on you for not seeing ‘Almost Famous’ yet. And don’t try and say you did, damnit, because I’ve seen the numbers and it’s just not doing well. And that’s a shame, because ‘Almost Famous’ is one of the few decent, thoughtful, well-done movies of a frighteningly dry and dull (so far) fall movie season.

Cameron Crowe directs from a script based on his experiences as a fifteen year old writer for ‘Rolling Stone’ in the late seventies. He casts a fresh-faced, likable young actor named Patrick Fugit as his alter ego, William Miller, and puts him on tour with Stillwater (a composite band, inspired by the Allman Brothers, Lynard Skynard, Zepplin, and the like) and their ‘Band-Aids’—NOT groupies—led by the beautiful Penny Lane (Kate Hudson). And, in the process of writing a cover story for the Stone, he grows up and falls in love and so on. Summarizing the movie makes it sound like a series of predictable broad strokes, when the small touches are what makes the film sing. Like the moment when William’s older sister sits him and his disciplinarian mom (beautifully played by Frances McDormand) down, and plays them a song to explain why she’s leaving home. And the scene when he discovers the present she left him. And the phone conversation between McDorman and Billy Crudup (excellent as the band’s enigmatic guitarist). And the part where they sing along with ‘Tiny Dancer’ on the bus. And the way he loses his virginity. And the moment when he bursts into tears, and we realize that we’ve forgotten that he’s, by any standards, just a kid.

Frances McDormand is spot-fucking-on as the mom, a character so well-written and complex that her performance puts the dim, one-dimensional parent characters in most films centered on teens to shame. She’s a college professor and prides herself on encouraging free thought in her kids, yet she forbids rock music and meat and insists on celebrating Christmas months early so it’s not commercialized. But she loves her kids, and she’s protective because she’s scared. Watch very closely a scene where William calls her from a pay phone and just tries to tell him that she loves and misses him. William, meanwhile, uses the opportunity to say the words while looking at Penny Lane. Most filmmakers would take that easy payoff and leave it at that. Crowe stays with the scene a beat longer, as McDormand tosses the phone in desperation and is all alone. It’s a devastating little moment, and then it’s gone.

And Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Oh, sweet merciful Christ, Phillip Seymour Hoffman. He’s so goddamn good in this movie, I wanted to piss my pants. Hoffman plays Lester Bangs, the legendary rock critic for ‘Creem’ and ‘Rolling Stone’ who amounts to the film’s Yoda. The role is beautifully written, but Goddamnit Hoffman brings the thing to life--especially his conversation, late in the film, with William about good-looking people having no spine and how the only currency in this bankrupt world are the transactions between people, like themselves, who aren’t cool.

Is it a coincidence that two of this year’s best films, this and ‘High Fidelity’, are both about people who are obsessed with music? I don’t think so. It’s not a stretch to obsessively love music in the same way you can love movies, and you have to love movies to make great ones like this.