Dumb and dumbest

Rating: Null/10 (24 August 1999)

In the early 90s Michael Medved wrote a book urging Hollywood to eschew sex and violence and make films that extolled the virtues of America, family, religion, apple pie, Thanksgiving, home-baked cookies blah blah blah. He was arguing from a 'moral' (read 'conventional Western family-oriented' standpoint) but his argument also had a bearing on the bottom line. He reckoned that more 'nice' films would encourage more people back into the cinemas.
Forrest Gump would appear to be the realisation of Medved's dream, to the extent that the movie also praises the virtue he left off the list, namely abject stupidity.
Because that's what MM and his cronies really want, isn't it? Movies that don't challenge, don't irritate, don't ask awkward questions. Movies with no toilets (see Pleasantville), movies that operate on the assumption that a fortune-cookie-spouting dullard who loves his mom is some kind of embodiment of the American dream.
Wake up, America. You managed to elect one Hollywood simpleton with a tenuous acquaintance to reality. Now you make movies about them. In the words of the greatest American philosopher, D'OH!
This is a dumb movie, made by clever, cynical people, for other people who want to feel all warm and fuzzy and not worry about the fact that they lost all form of intellectual discrimination the day they took out that subscription to Reader's Digest. It sucks like an industrial vacuum cleaner on amphetamine sulphate. Yuk.