Pay It Forward
Like some other kids, 12-year-old Trevor McKinney believed in the goodness of human nature. Like many other kids, he was determined to change the world for the better. Unlike most other kids, he succeeded.
Movies Like Pay It Forward
Similar in style, tone, and themes — find your next watch.
Dead Poets Society
1989★ 8.3
At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.
All Together Now
2020★ 6.7
An optimistic, talented teen clings to a huge secret: she's homeless and living on a school bus. When tragedy strikes, can she learn to accept a helping hand?
People Like Us
2012★ 6.8
After flying home to L.A. for the funeral of his estranged record-producer father, a struggling man discovers that the will stipulates that he must deliver $150,000 in cash to a 30-year-old alcoholic sister he never knew existed, and her troubled 12-year-old son.
Out of My Mind
2024★ 7.8
Melody Brooks, a sixth grader with cerebral palsy, has a quick wit and a sharp mind, but because she is non-verbal and uses a wheelchair, she is not given the same opportunities as her classmates. When a young educator notices her student's untapped potential and Melody starts to participate in mainstream education, Melody shows that what she has to say is more important than how she says it.
Starving in Suburbia
2014★ 6.5
When seventeen-year-old Hannah stumbles upon a website about Thinspiration--an online community devoted to anorexia as a life choice--she becomes an obsessive follower of the site founder, ButterflyAna. By the time Hannah's family realizes what is happening and get Hannah the help she needs, the disease has fully taken hold and Hannah is refusing to eat. Will this family be able to exorcise the demon of anorexia from their lives?
Call Me Crazy: A Five Film
2013★ 7.0
A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
An American Girl: McKenna Shoots for the Stars
2012★ 6.8
A young girl struggles to maintain her school grades while competing as a gymnast.
The Color of Rain
2014★ 6.4
After cancer claims Matt Kell's life on Christmas Day 2005, his widow, Gina and two young boys are left to cope with the pain of his loss while their close church community gathers around them for support.
Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story
2003★ 7.3
Based on a true story. Liz Murray is a young girl who is taken care of by her loving, but drug-addicted parents. Liz becomes homeless at 15 and after a tragedy comes upon her, she begins her work to finish high school.
The Miracle Worker
1962★ 7.9
The true story of the frightening, lonely world of silence and darkness of 7-year-old Helen Keller who, since infancy, has never seen the sky, heard her mother's voice or expressed her innermost feelings. Then Annie Sullivan, a 20-year-old teacher from Boston, arrives. Having just recently regained her own sight, the no-nonsense Annie reaches out to Helen through the power of touch, the only tool they have in common, and leads her bold pupil on a miraculous journey from fear and isolation to happiness and light.
Beyond the Blackboard
2011★ 7.5
Inspired by a true story, “Beyond the Blackboard” is about a 24-year-old first-time teacher who makes a difference in the lives of the homeless children she teaches in a shelter’s makeshift classroom. Set in 1987 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, this movie tells the story a brand-new teacher and Mom who is given a tougher than expected teaching job and winds up teaching homeless children in a school that is housed in a room and called, literally, The School with No Name. She has some personal prejudicial hurdles to cross before she is able to be a true teacher for these children and of course there are hurdles like the lack of books and supplies.
The Fabelmans
2022★ 7.6
Growing up in post-World War II era Arizona, young Sammy Fabelman aspires to become a filmmaker as he reaches adolescence, but soon discovers a shattering family secret and explores how the power of films can help him see the truth.
Hereafter
2010★ 6.1
Three people — a blue-collar American, a French journalist and a London school boy — are touched by death in different ways.
Richard Jewell
2019★ 7.4
Richard Jewell thinks quick, works fast, and saves hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives after a domestic terrorist plants several pipe bombs and they explode during a concert, only to be falsely suspected of the crime by sloppy FBI work and sensational media coverage.
Northfork
2003★ 6.0
The year is 1955, and a great flood is coming to Northfork, Montana. A new hydroelectric dam is about to be installed in the mountains above the town, ready to submerge the valley in the name of progress. It is the responsibility of a six-man Evacuation Committee to relocate the townsfolk to higher ground. Most have duly departed, but a few stubborn stragglers remain – among them a priest caring for a sickly orphan, a boy whose fevered visions are leading him to believe he is a member of a roaming band of lost angels desperately searching for a way home.
My Dinner with Hervé
2018★ 6.3
An unlikely friendship evolves over one wild night in LA between a struggling journalist and actor Hervé Villechaize, the world's most famous gun-toting dwarf, resulting in life-changing consequences for both.
Doctor Who: Last Christmas
2014★ 7.7
The Doctor and Clara face their Last Christmas. Trapped on an Arctic base, under attack from terrifying creatures, who are you going to call? Santa Claus!
Gigi & Nate
2022★ 7.6
A young man with a bright future suffers a near-fatal accident and recreates his new life with the help of an unlikely animal friend.
Come Sunday
2018★ 5.8
Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
2017★ 6.3
An African-American woman becomes an unwitting pioneer for medical breakthroughs when her cells are used to create the first immortal human cell line in the early 1950s.