FACT: mental handicap = nomination

Rating: 4/10 (12 July 2005)

Give me a break, this is nothing special. The only reason this movie has the kind of reputation is does is because of the proved fact that it is impossible for someone to play a leading role in which a character is mentally handicapped and *NOT get a nomination, let alone have the movie received well. Think about that for a second and you'll see that's true. There are no movies that weren't received well where an actor played a *main character with a *mental handicap. (keep in mind the asterisked words, that's what qualifies my statement)
There are movies like this I do like, this is simply not one of them. This was boring because the film had no direction, it simply feels like you're watching the biography of a person from some historical text played out on the big screen. It's just one episode after the next depicting the heroic acts of Forrest and showing the relationships between him and the people he meets, but all these events don't build into any storyline you can care about. Each individual episode presents its own challenges to Forrest, but these feel isolated and doesn't build to any kind of payoff.
If you like stories like this, go watch Sling Blade, it's a much better movie that doesn't put on a facade of being some grand spectacle of our time.