The Ultimate Fad Movie

Rating: 4/10 (16 March 2009)

"Forrest Gump" is the ultimate fad movie. It came out big in 1994 and created a cultural sensation. It was easy to get swept up in its panorama of American cultural history, and all of the iconic imagery in the film made it seem like it was saying something important. But all these years later, this treacly piece of rubbish is nearly intolerable.
The film is full of easy sentiment and false emotion. It depicts one thing after another (the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, Watergate, the AIDS crisis) that trigger automatic emotional responses in the audience, so that the filmmakers don't have to do any work of their own to make the material effective. But underneath the lesson in American history and the admittedly terrific soundtrack, I can't help but wonder what point the movie tries to make. Are we to applaud Forrest for his pluck and resiliency when the only reason for them is the fact that he's too simple minded to understand the things that happen to him? Are we supposed to emulate him? Is the message that we all make life too complicated, and that we all need to buckle down to the only things that really matter, like love of country, God and our dear ol' mama? If so, gag.
Tom Hanks is a winning presence in the film, and if anyone was going to be able to carry this story along, I imagine he did just as good a job as anyone else would have. But the only character worth watching as far as I'm concerned is poor little Jenny, played valiantly by Robin Wright Penn, who comes closer than anyone to playing an actual human being, despite the film's tendency to chew her character up and spit her out.
This movie is like a box of chocolates...too much of it and you'll be sick.
Grade: C-