Over-hyped feel-good fodder

Rating: 4/10 (9 October 2000)

After all the hype surrounding this movie and its subsequent showing at the Oscars, i thought i knew enough about this movie to know it wasn't going to be my type of flick. "..feel-good fodder for the dumbed down American masses...simple boy leads extraordinary life in an over-simplified excursion thru post war America.... over-hyped, over-rewarded.. lacking realism and believable characters."
that would have been some thing like the review i might have given prior to watching this film.
having now seen the film ( thru a rather sad of anything else to do on Saturday night)i would not change much about what i've already said about the film except to say , if possible it was even worse than i feared.
Not once did i feel any pathos for Gump. his low IQ was mainly used as a convenient plot device to explain all the unbelievable things that happened to him. Who can believe a guy who runs across America for 3 years just because he felt like it all of a sudden? If all the things that happen to Gump really happend to one person, that person would be a national celebrity if not an icon. Yet Gump seems to end the movie as a relatively anonymous character. Some might say this adds to the charm of the story, that this guy could be involved in all these extraordinary happenings without really knowing the consequences of his actions and what was going on around him. I think this merely adds to the flawed nature of the film. SPOILER ALERT Having said all of this, the movie maybe has one redeeming feature.My girlfriend was in tears by the end when Jenny dies. Maybe this works as a love story. But i wouldnt watch this film just on that basis. In fact i won't ever watch this film again unless someone offers me a serious amount of money, which lets face it is about as realistic as most of this movie!