Spacey leads off the movie, as an elementary school teacher, his face scarred with burn tissue. He will be teaching social studies to a bunch of seventh-graders, one of which will be our hero, played by little big Mr. Osment. As their first assignment, he asks of them to come up with an idea that can do something big, up to and including changing the world. Our hero is a smart boy, living with his single mother, played by Helen Hunt, who should register a patent for a tough-single-mom role. He’s thinking and he comes up with it. He will help three people with something big, something they couldn’t have done on their own, and instead of having them pay him back for the favor, they should pay it forward, to three other people each, spreading the good until there’s no evil. His plan doesn’t seem to work at first, but he keeps trying.

Hollywood acting heavyweights such as Spacey and Hunt are in tune with their characters. Spacey is his usual perfect self, a bitter man, hiding from his frustrations behind obsessive-compulsive disorders. Hunt is not that far from her As Good As It Gets character, and she’s playing it safe, as a mother forced to moonlight in places where the dress code is almost as lenient as the patrons’ code of conduct. It is the young Osment who is a truly refreshing figure. Away from his "I see dead people" routine, his acting display is admirable, especially in a role that is somewhat demanding for a cub-actor. As complements to the leading threesome, there is a number of episodic roles, used to make the scope of the movie as broad as possible. We have Jay Mohr as a persistent reporter, James Caviezel is a homeless man and the first experiment of the "pay it forward" idea, and Angie Dickinson is still electrifying as Hunt’s alcoholic mother. And let’s not forget some eye candy for the moviegoers of the gentler gender, in the form of a "Papa was a rolling stone", played by Jon Bon Jovi.