Minor plot completely runs out of steam by midway

Rating: 4/10 (27 December 2014)

Conventional wisdom back in 1994 stated that one must either be a huge fan of Oscar nominee Pulp Fiction (which purportedly signified the new cinema) or of its polar opposite, Oscar winner Forrest Gump (which signified old school film). Truthfully, I am a fan of neither film and of the Best Picture nominees for that year, I would most assuredly have picked The Shawshank Redemption over both without hesitation.
Forrest Gump is a simple story about a simple man - expanded over an arrogant nearly 3 hour running time. A Southern man of low I.Q., whose good intentions and well-meaning heart allow him to triumph over the obstacles and adversities life throws his way. The film opens with Forrest sitting on a park bench regaling others with his exploits, such as his outrunning bullies and becoming a football hero, his tour in Vietnam which led to a successful shrimping business and his enduring love for his childhood friend, Jenny.
Director Robert Zemeckis can be a great director and the first hour of Forrest Gump is very good. It establishes a tone of bemused whimsy that the material requires. Unfortunately, bemused whimsy is a hard tone to maintain, especially when your film has such a slight plot, a running time that would be a strain with the best material, and a central character that is, let's face it, not particularly fascinating. By the midway section, the film starts to stumble and then completely implodes right around the time that Forrest starts running back and forth from coast to coast for no apparent reason.
For comedic measure and a degree of relevance, the story tries to shoehorn Forrest in with historic figures, fads and events, some of which work well and some not at all. The tie-in with Watergate and Forrest showing his wound to Nixon are amusing, but his scene on the National Mall at an anti-war protest where the microphone cuts out so the crowd can remain clueless that he is an imbecile is ridiculously coy. And the sequence with John Lennon, where it is obvious the words do not match the lip movements is downright embarrassing. The Oscar for special effects here is a real stretch.
Tom Hanks can be a great everyman actor (like James Stewart). He can also be overrated and it is to his misfortune that the two films for which he won back to back Oscars are two of his most overrated efforts. One can see politically in Oscar circles why he would win for Philadelphia, but the win for Forrest Gump the next year is most puzzling. Forrest has very little range emotionally or intellectually, and he largely reacts to everything the same way.
Sally Field seems oddly miscast as Forrest's mother, who apparently gifted her son with his low-rent fortune cookie advice. Gary Sinise provides the film's only really great performance as Forrest's Vietnam superior and later friend - providing some of the grit and emotion that the remainder of the film lacks.
In the pivotal role of Jenny - the girl who Forrest has loved since childhood - Robin Wright is a complete wash-out. The film keeps returning to her character, who has become an embittered drug addict and it founders every time it does. Jenny may have her reasons for her addictions, but she is often played as a shrewish selfish person, who takes Forrest's help when convenient, and shuns him when she is finished with him. Hanks and Wright have no chemistry together and because of her shoddy treatment of Forrest, I cannot imagine anyone rooting for them as a couple. A foolishly lengthy mid-film sequence with Jenny on a ledge contemplating suicide actually had one witty film-goer in my audience begging her to jump - I concur. Her final moments in the film are especially absurd - as she once again shows up to prey on Forrest's good will - this time announcing that she is dying from some mystery illness which seems to be AIDS although the filmmakers refuse to say and she wants Forrest to care for her son, which she assures him is his (although we as an audience are not really sure given the characters chronic dishonesty). This strange disease seems to have been borrowed from Love Story, as Wright's only major symptom seems to be that she gets more luminous and has better lighting the closer to death she gets.
The final hour of the film is near unendurable. The whimsy has been lost and the events surrounding Forrest just seem to get sillier and more pointless. As a character on which to hang a film, Forrest is largely a slow-witted blank. He ends the film almost exactly as he starts it. He has had no great epiphanies or insights or much in way of growth - he has been largely a passive passenger riding the wave of life. The film's meme that good-hearted people will always get what's coming to them is beyond naive and a tad insulting - as there are many good-hearted people who have the opposite happen. Ironically, we never get to see the expressions or reactions of the people Forrest victimizes with his tales, which may be intentional since they may have run screaming from the park bench or just passed out in bored apathy.