Forrest Gump (1994)
Grade: B-
Cast: Tom Hanks, Robin Wright Penn, Sally Field, Mikelti Willamson, Gary Sinise, Haley Joel Osment, and Hanna R. Hall
Director: Robert Zemekis
Rated PG-13 for war violence, sexual situations, language, and intense overratedness


Ah, cinema fans say, there’s nothing more heartwarming than an overachieving retard. That’s the only explanation for the fact that America flocked to the theaters in 1994 to see "Forrest Gump." Now, as for why it won so many Oscars---especially Tom Hanks’ Best Actor Academy Award---I really can’t explain. It was the same year as "Shawshank" and "Pulp"---ah, it’s just so frustrating.

The film starts out with Forrest Gump sitting on a park bench (I have to skip the friggin’ feather part, please forgive me). This is a man with an IQ of 75. He begins to tell his life story to a young black woman (I thought it pretty smart that the movie made the listener someone who couldn’t care less). “Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates,” Forrest says with a droll, adoring veneration towards his beloved Mama that no one but him completely understands. “You never know what ya gonna get.” (Catchphrase #1) When he was young he had leg braces, and no friends besides the beautiful and completely unlikely relationship he had with Jenny (as a child, Hanna R. Hall). One day, he is being chased by bullies, and encouraged by Jenny: “Run, Forrest, run!” (Catchphrase #2---I’ll stop here, but let’s just say there are at least 5). His leg braces pop off, and he indeed runs. And runs. The kid with back problems who needed leg braces becomes a football hero.

You have to ask yourself---huh? To make myself a little more brief, Forrest becomes a war hero and sort of befriends Lieutenant Dan (Gary Sinise in an excellent performance) and bonds with a shrimp-obsessed, near-replica of Gump named Bubba during the war. He becomes a hero for saving Dan’s life…but Dan doesn’t really appreciate Gump’s life-saving deed; he now has no legs, and wanted to die in the war like all his ancestors.

Gump meets presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, in wonderfully done scenes using archive footage and justifying the film’s Best Special Effects Oscar. He also becomes a shrimp boat captain in memory of Bubba. He also chases after Jenny (played nicely by Robin Wright), who has turned out to be not quite the person that she could have been---or has she? The film can’t figure out if she’s bad or good, depicting her as a whore one moment and as a sweet, loving lost soul the next. Eh? Forrest ends up impregnating her and having a smart(!) child named Forrest Jr., played by a cute, young, pre-Sixth Sense Haley Joel Osment.

Why was this film so popular? Don’t get the wrong idea (although I see how you could, with my seemingly never ending bashing), but I enjoyed this movie. But this is one of those movies that’s synonymous with overrated. I have already figured that my somewhat negative opinion towards the film will automatically make some assume that I’m saying it’s overrated “just to be cool”. I’m not. I just fail to say what is so innovative, so brilliant, so *Oscar worthy* about "Forrest Gump." First off, Tom Hanks annoyed the crap out of me. Why was he even nominated for Best Actor? To me, he sounds like a cruel imitation of a slow person…like he’s ridiculing the mentally challenged. I didn’t believe his portrayal for a minute. It’s odd that such an unlikable performance would come from an actor I consider so likable and talented, but it did, and he’s lucky he had a great supporting cast to compensate for his faltering in the portrayal of the titular character.

Sally Field, playing Forrest’s mom, is wonderful (if Tom Hanks’ was a performance as real as this, I wouldn’t be complaining). Even better is Gary Sinise. Like the representation of Jenny, we ultimately never know which way to latch on to the character, but Sinise’s painful and sometimes funny exploration into the character of Lieutenant Dan (or, if you speak like Gump, “Dane”) is great. He deserved his Oscar nomination. As Jenny, Wright is good as well, although the character seemingly belongs to the script; Wright never FULLY grasps the role in the way Sinise and Field do.

There is much humor in the movie, and I was definitely appreciative of that---the funny moments in FORREST GUMP are really the best parts. As was mentioned before, the special effects deservedly won the Oscar in 1994. They make Gump’s past encounters with the presidents I listed above and other people like John Lennon entirely believable. Not only that, but there’s another rarely acknowledged treat on the technical side: the soundtrack. It often uses music from the time periods it’s representing wittily and almost always effectively.

Robert Zemeckis’ steady direction is notable. All these wonderful things, but clichés are so present throughout the film that I couldn’t help but feel there was something about it that was just so utterly false. The screenplay, peppered with visual gimmicks and witty lines, but also enough schmaltz to make you think that Robin Williams probably auditioned for the part, is good, but, in its worst moments, is TV-movie stuff. At the risk of becoming repetitive, "Forrest Gump" is a film that, if I were Ebert, I would’ve said was a thumbs-up film, but doesn’t deserve the respect it acquires.

It’s certainly confident enough, but it’s, in the end, only worthy of a weekend rental. You’ll laugh, you’ll smile, and you’ll be mad that the film lasts 2 hours and 22 minutes. It’s ridiculous how bad this editing is that it couldn’t have cut stuff out like Forrest’s 3-year run (or however long that lasted). That, my friends, is where the film really lost me. Uh-huh, yeah, what a concept, guys! The film is a little far-fetched to begin with---a slow man telling JFK he has to pee doesn’t exactly demand comparisons to reality. But come on!

I hope that the fact that this film is so overpraised doesn’t change my memories of it. The film is a pleasurable experience, but the scene in which he takes that run, and that terribly written voice-over narration almost made me spit my Sprite at the screen. As gleefully irreverent and clever as the film sometimes is, its dependence on deep subject matter dooms it to be uneven. A film that carries a scene in which a young lady almost kills herself under the influence of drugs cannot also have a scene in which Forrest shows a president the battle scar on his butt. It just didn’t work.

Oh, I was moved at least a little bit in the scene where Forrest talks to Jenny—even though she’s, er, dead—but that poignancy that took over my head for a brief second was easily dispelled by the time the credits began to roll. The film, as inconsequential as it is, knows it has a universal cleverness to it, and thus never knows when to stop and tone it down. It has the makings to be a gem, but what is at the film’s center just doesn’t add up to be the classic it’s known for being.


-Alex, June 2002