An everyman for today!

Rating: 9/10 (4 June 2007)

The movie Forrest Gump is a fantastic movie. Both setting and plot were fabulous and it definitely showed "The World". Forrest Gump starts telling how stupid he is and then he becomes a marvelous football player, a ping pong player, and shrimp fisherman. He has a different intelligence and that makes him special and so successful in life. The most inspiring thing he does is how he fights for Jenny. When he always follows her and never gives up on her. At the beginning of the film, I thought he was really stupid but I realized that all he says is symbolic. He acts stupid but is actually smarter than most of the other people, that is why you should never judge someone by his/her appearance. He also has the typical Alabama accent, which makes the movie seem even more realistic. Each character was used surrealistically and unrealistically to show the theme everyman.
The actors in this movie are perfectly well cast. Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks) is such a good actor and plays his role brilliant. He should've deserved an Academic award. Sally Field, who plays Forrest's mother, is actually only 4 years older than Tom Hanks, plays her role as a mother really well and symbolizes good motherhood. She can act as if she is 20 years older than him. Jenny (Robin Wright) plays her role as a good friend of Forrest and Hippie also very well. All the main characters do their job really well in this movie. The most supporting character was Jenny (Robin Wright). She was the main reason why Forrest Gump did everything. At the end where she dies, he even mentions it that he's done everything she wanted and that he loved her. She really supported him to achieve something in his life.
I really liked the setting in this movie. Where Forrest Gump starts off as a normal boy to a man in a small fictional town in Alabama, and then travels around and sees "the whole world". He is a simple Alabama kid and becomes all of a sudden really famous. It is like his life was chosen by destiny. That he would start off really small and then become very big and famous. He didn't choose to become a football player or a shrimp fisherman; he met Bubba to even find out what shrimps were. Only one thing was something he chose and always wanted to have, to get married with Jenny. His love and everything he would do for her to make her happy. The author did this on purpose. He wanted to show himself as everyman. That everyman can achieve something in their lives, not as much as Forrest Gump like he was there most of the events and became a ping pong player and all that. Obviously he couldn't be there on those events, but this is for the theme, to show everyman.
When Forrest Gump started to run around the whole world, he inspired many people. Only by running he just made them all run with him. He is a great inspiration even though people think he is "dumb". He does things that seem to be stupid, but actually are very clever. He is a very hard-working man and achieves everything which everyman wants. That shows basically the theme of this movie: work hard and you will achieve your goals. No wonder that this movie had won several Academy Awards. It is a great movie and I would suggest all the people who don't believe in themselves to watch this movie. It helped me a lot to work for my dreams, my hopes, and everything what I always tried to be.
If I had to rate this movie, I would give 9 out of 10 points because it has an exciting plot and well-chosen characters. Alabama is a great place for the setting of this movie and everywhere Forrest Gump went was also well chosen to show the theme: "Life is like a box of chocolates!" It means that you never know what you will get and everyman doesn't know what they get except trying to achieve their goals to find out. This movie has more than only one theme, but talking about all themes would take ages. It has got the theme of war and theme of motherhood and much more. The movie was definitely better than the book since it was more realistic and had better characterization. It is basically a message to us to see what is happening in the world or what happened. It really impressed me and I would watch it again because it is so interesting. It is almost perfect but as we all know, nothing or no one is perfect!