Great crowd pleaser with stellar acting and a very good story.

Rating: 7/10 (26 December 2014)

This movie will please nearly any crowd. This is the one movie that I believe really has it all. Some films and series try to follow suit, but the one that does it best apart from Gump is the Pirates of the Caribbean series, which is primarily an action series anyways. The different events of the back half of the 20th century hit many different areas of life and many different genres of film. There is plenty of humor, bits of excitement, romance placed throughout, moments of sadness and inspiration, and a pretty good amount of history.
The fact that it is told out of the intellectually challenged Forrest Gump is nice. The audience still see the events from its own individual eyes, and some of those watching may have their own memories of the given points in history, but we also see the events in Forrest's simplified version. He's a great character because, while not very smart, he is an incredibly nice person that sees no reason to show malice towards anyone. So even with his impairment, he is really one step ahead of the world all of the time. Another great quality that he has is his influence. People now use his name to identify someone who has lots of important events happen around him, which is understandable. But he also happens to the events around him, if that makes sense. No historical event prompted him to do his three year run, develop his mad ping-pong skills, or be a great football player.
The history involves more than just events, for we see the progression of culture and everyday life in the scattered glimpses we get of Jenny's life. She pretty much is a prime example of what not to do in the seventies, or really any stage of life. Her character is shown as free spirited, impulsive, whimsical, restless, and even stupid sometimes, but at the same time good-hearted deeper down.
The other main characters are Mrs. Gump, Bubba, and Lieutenant Dan. Mrs. Gump is obviously the reason that Forrest is such a positively influential person. Bubba is very simpleminded life Forrest, but is a very good friend, as Forrest points out very blatantly. Lieutenant Dan is an exceedingly grumpy and pessimistic guy who lives off of his sorrows. In some ways, he's kind of what a mean Forrest would look like since they've both lost people and have some kind of impairment. What sets them apart is that they deal with their problems differently.
It's clear that Forrest impacts all of the people listed above, but also the people he talks to at the bus stop and the other small people he meets along the way. Examples could include the bumper sticker and tee-shirt salesmen he meets on his run, the anti-war group, and his Alabama teammates.
The technical execution is nothing special, but doesn't need to be either. If the whole movie took place in Vietnam, I would say that the war themed special effects should have been improved from their current state, but since there was only about five minutes of battle, the low-quality explosions were acceptable. The acting was spectacular from every character, big and small. This fact is perhaps what makes the movie as great as it is, because the characters are already well written so to pair it with great acting is like cinematic explosion.
I would recommend this to just about anyone, but it's best to go into the movie with a pretty good knowledge of history from 1950 to 1980. It's a good go-to movie when a large group is deciding on a movie to watch together. So if you haven't seen it, strongly consider adding it to your shelf or online movie library. Overall Rating: 8.4/10.