Retard Yourself With Retro-Culture!

Rating: Null/10 (1 April 2009)

If you're like me you hate to think; even worse is thinking about history- so much moral ambiguity, so much perspective and bothersome shades of grey... isn't there a movie out there that can assure me that everything that happened during the latter-half of the twentieth century was Just Fine- all while deafening me with jukebox favorites?
Now you can! Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks proudly present "Forrest Gump" a left-wing work of right-wing propaganda that boldly proclaims the mentally retarded are not just AS GOOD as you and me, but better! And as a result, American Heroes!
Forrest's IQ is charted at seventy, which means he will stay boyishly naive until the script calls for him to suddenly make a profound declaration for the Oscar clip: "I'm not a smart man... but I know what love is." Whatchyou talking' bout, Forrest?
This is retro-active re-writing of pop-culture disguised as American history designed to make us all feel better about not understanding the exact details of the Watergate break-in or the black panther party. Forrest floats through life with the gravity- and substance- of a feather, tossing off sickeningly-pointless nothingisms: "Life is like a box of chocolates..." No, it isn't.
It really, really isn't.
His erstwhile girlfriend goes through every cliché of cultural extremism (flower child, disco burnout, AIDS corpse) to lecture the audience about the dangers of Actually Being Involved In Something! We'll be much better off if we listen to Mama like Forrest and dip our toes in the water only for the sake of a digitally-enhanced photo-opportunity. (Love the way you moved Lennon's lips to set up your clunker of a joke... that took a lot of class!) And finally the mystery of who taught Elvis to dance has been solved- it was a crippled simpleton, and not the butler as previously suspected.
But the adventures don't end there: Zemeckis (Greek for arrogant-ignorant) wants us to believe that this Drooling Dandy was an integral part of EVERY significant historical event: Gump meets JFK, carves Mount Rushmore, builds the sun, performs open-heart surgery! Forrest saves a fellow soldier during The War (good) who happens to be black (better) and inherits a shrimping boat (obviously)... we meet Gary Sinise's Lieutenant Dan who has the gall to question Gump's ability; for this his legs are blown off and he's doomed to an entire life of pain and suffering. Don't fear the retard...
All of Forrest's toothless adventures are washed down with some of the most over-played soundtrack songs of the era, until the Dumb One takes to the road for a series of painful gags, increasing exponentially in stupidity until finally he's left with the motherless son he never wanted nor could possibly raise. (It's the next best thing to Immaculate Conception.) Are we vomiting yet?
Ultimately, Forrest Gump proves that Tom Hanks was so good in "Philadelphia" that we weren't finished giving him Oscars, and the movie's other trophies only go to prove that we're the very lemmings They think we are, preferring glossy bile over thought-provoking quality.
This is "Pop-Culture for Dummies" masquerading as American History and quality film. Will rot your brain like crack-cocaine.
GRADE: F