Preachy, Simplistic, and Sappy

Rating: 4/10 (8 December 2000)

Great CGI effects & a truly Oscar-worthy performance by Gary Sinise as Lt. Dan.
Tom Hanks is a one-trick pony in this movie, how he got the Best Actor Oscar that year over Morgan Freeman was a crime.
This movie is a pandering treacly love letter to the baby boom generation, with a barely concealed right-wing prejudice, beginning from Forrest's service in Vietnam all the way through to the "resolution" with Jenny at the end.
With that said, though, it is hugely entertaining and an American movie through and through. I found certain parts of this film exceedingly offensive, Zemeckis dumbs down this movie almost to the level of Gump himself . . .maybe that was the point he was trying to make.

Watch this film and ask yourself "What is Robert Zemeckis saying about what makes a good American?"
Forrest seems to have made the "right" choices and been at the "right place at the right time" for the last 45 years. Those who are wrong according to the director's vision seem to pay a heavy price. So is Zemeckis saying that idiocy disguised as innocence and naivety is a patriotic, even AMERICAN quality?