Stupid is as stupid does. So we do...

Rating: 10/10 (2 February 1999)

First, I'd like to say that this movie is formidably made. Referring to acting, storyline and the astonishing FX I couldn't do more than repeating things other admirers of FG have already said. It's got all in it: comedy, romance and the fuel a movie needs to work: the "I wonder how it'll all end!" that keeps (most of) the audience with this character throughout this quite long film.
I can't agree with the points often critizised about FG. And, honestly, I think that the less subtle the critics are, the more hurt is their U.S. patriotism. First, If you wonder if something is realistic here, you should stop watching movies. One good thing about FG is, that it isn't supposed to be realistic, though it almost convinces you that it is, but it is far too overdone to be so. It is meant to be a fable, like Benigni's "La vita e bella".
"Stupid is as stupid does" is to my mind the key word throughout the movie. Forrest Gump stumbles through world history (though only the United States are shown, but Hollywood usually supposes them to be the world so the movie has to be seen more in general than it's usual critics do) and what he sees makes only sense to a dim-whitted who doesn't let himself get stirred by events: Politicians are shot at(though no one elects better ones), Leutenants seek death in battle, "running as fast as the wind" is regarded as sufficient to get a collegue-degree and somebody who wants to change the world ends up in a terrible mess, having somehow missed the point. So we all do stupid often enough, society does and even America does like the rest of the world. Just Forrest doesn't.(Except towards Jenny, but that's a completely different thing, that's love.)He has only an IQ of 75 but he is the only one who behaves in a way we would like to expect from everyone (though we surely don't want them to talk like that). He has nothing to base his actions upon than his common sense and that shows us how far we've come apart from our ideal of rational behaviour.
In the end one word to those who hated the film for Jenny's death of AIDS which they regarded as punishment,decreed by an reactionary movie: to my mind, Jenny's death is not ideology, it's tragedy, though it also conveys the basic idea of the movie. We won't get a better world by revolutions or drugs, we only achieve it if more people would do like Forrest, even when they have a higher IQ.