A thousand-points-of-light fable about a pensive seventh-grader in soulless Las Vegas, who takes his Social Studies assignment -- "Think of an idea to change our world, and put it into action!" -- takes it very seriously indeed, and initiates a grassroots movement that spreads like wildfire. His idea: do a really big favor for three different people, and rather than ask them to pay it back, ask them to pay it forward, doing favors for three people of their own. If this vision of exponential do-gooding doesn't make you warm all over, it at least ought to make you warm in your blushing zones. (The literal thousand-points-of-light finale should see to that.) And it enables director Mimi Leder, working from a script by Leslie Dixon, to explore her more feminine, more nurturing, side. More, that is, than in the dueling doomsdays of The Peacemaker and Deep Impact. With Helen Hunt, Kevin Spacey, Haley Joel Osment, Jay Mohr, James Caviezel, Jon Bon Jovi, Angie Dickinson, and (too briefly) Kathleen Wilhoite. (2000) — Duncan Shepherd
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