It is set in Las Vegas, and it chronicles 11- to 12-year-old Trevor McKinney's launch of a goodwill movement known as "pay it forward".

It stars Haley Joel Osment as Trevor, Helen Hunt as his alcoholic single mother Arlene McKinney, and Kevin Spacey as his physically and emotionally scarred social studies teacher Eugene Simonet.

His social studies teacher, Eugene Simonet, assigns the class to put into action a plan that will change the world for the better.

Eugene has deep burn marks visible on his neck and face, and he initially resists Arlene's overtures out of insecurity.

Arlene accepts this and forms an emotional bond with him, but abandons their relationship when Ricky returns, claiming to have quit drinking.

Trevor's school assignment marks the beginning of the story's chronology, but the opening scene in the film shows one of the later favors in the "pay it forward" tree, in which a man gives a car to Los Angeles journalist Chris Chandler.

As the film proceeds, Chris traces the chain of favors back to its origin as Trevor's school project.

Leslie Dixon adapted the screenplay from the book of the same name by Catherine Ryan Hyde, which was available as an open writing assignment.

[3] Dixon presented the idea to Hyde who in turn liked it so much that she decided to change the then-unpublished novel's plot structure to mirror the film's.

The consensus reads, "Pay It Forward has strong performances from Spacey, Hunt, and Osment, but the movie itself is too emotionally manipulative and the ending is bad.

[16] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two and a half out of four stars, stating "With a cleaner story line, the basic idea could have been free to deliver.

"[17] Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum gave it a "D" grade, calling it "reprehensible" for using "shameless cliches of emotional and physical damage" and then "blackmailing audiences into joining the let's-be-nice 'movement'" in order to be transparent Oscar bait.