Uproarious scenes of physical comic chaos meld with an interesting perspective on the untruths we tell to make ourselves look better in this ultimately sweet and very funny film. Stiller and DeNiro spar with graceful comic ease, and ultra-suburbia has rarely been drawn more convincingly. The Patriot is an uncomfortably smooth ride over mixed terrain of emotional posturing, flashy action sequences and cultural misrepresentation. Haley Joel Osment is Trevor, a latchkey kid, weary of his mother's problems with alcohol. Far more compelling is Trevor's introduction of his teacher, Eugene, to his mom, Arlene.
Hunt plays the hard-ridden, recovering alcoholic, single mom with grit and heart.
And as Eugene lets down some of his guard, letting Arlene in, their dance of romance is sweet and endearing. But instead of ending as a love story with a social message, Pay It Forward succumbs to grandiosity, insisting on being a forced religious allegory. At the end, any power that the film possessed in its lovely characterizations and charming story is quickly released like a gush of air from a balloon. The Perfect Storm turns out to be something of a wash. Director Wolfgang Petersen's clunky manner of making this obvious point feels heavy-handed and artificial.