Narrative voice over is old hat...but I can forgive. GREAT MOVIE

Rating: Null/10 (4 March 2003)

It seems that when a story is told on film, the most difficult thing to do is NOT use a narrative voice over. Sometimes film makers get lazy or lack creativity and decide that the viewer would be lost without the narrative, so they feel trapped into adding the story-telling voice over (or even worse, long paragraphs scrolling between each act). It is especially hard to avoid when covering a long time span. While being informative, to me it can dumb a movie down. This is the ONLY complaint I have with this whole movie. Beyond the small annoyance with the voiced over narration, I thought this was a near perfect movie, combining every element of great modern movie making, from beautiful scenery, to comedic genius, to action, to romance, and on to gripping drama. Further, this movie contained a great cast.

***************Spoiler Warning*************** My gripe about the narration being voiced over in order to inform the audience is tempered by the creativity which was used to present the narration. It wasn't your typical story telling of an elderly person wisely reflecting on the life he or she had lived, telling the story to the audience as if we were his or her grandchild. The narration was brilliantly inserted as Forrest met different people at the bus stop, giving us even more insight into this man. He is a simple, friendly and interesting man that wants people to know about him and the love and pain he has endured through the years. He didn't even realize the impact his life had on the culture of the past 2 decades. Or more interestingly, maybe he DID know what he was saying and just PLAYED dumb. After all, stupid is as stupid does. Maybe Forrest Gump was a genius (as his drill sergeant put it) and just wanted us to think his life was more important than it really was. Or how about this, maybe his life really did have this huge cultural impact and he was just being modest. It's incredible when you think about the number of possible explanations as to why Forrest seemed to so quickly spit out the grand story of his life and it's impact on the world without much regard to how important it REALLY was. He seemed to trivialize each major impact his life had on the world while maintaining his focus on his love for Jennie, his mother's wisdom, or his friend Ltnt Dan. This creativity, along with the layers it brings to Forrest's persona is why I am able to forgive the lazy approach to story telling in the narrative.
It was also interesting to me how some holes were closed, but left to the viewers imagination exactly what happened... most notably Jen's disease. Did she die from AIDS? Did she pass it to her son? Just an interesting tidbit, IMO.
In summary, this was a near perfect movie. I believe this movie will hold up for years to come and eventually will be considered a classic. I give this movie a rating of 9 out of 10 points.
If you like good music (especially 60's and 70's), get this soundtrack. It's the best movie soundtrack made, for my taste anyway.