Sometimes American Movies Are Like a Box of Gooey Chocolates, and Gump is Pure Sap: One of the Silliest Movies to Win Best Picture

Rating: 3/10 (18 April 2010)

There are two kinds of people in the world, my friend. Those who dig Forrest Gump, and those who don't. I don't. If "Forrest Gump" is truly viewed as some kind of inspirational cinematic experience, then America is in a lot of trouble. Forrest Gump is no masterpiece of cinema, not even by a long-shot. It is largely a formulated overly sentimental contrivance that simply plays too well into American saccharine tastes, mostly pop melodrama for the sake of pop melodrama. This was obviously made for the same audience that likes "Sleepless in Seattle" and "Lucky You".
Certainly, I don't have a problem with the idea of a feeble-minded main character from which to tell a story. ("Rain Man", a similar idea, is a far superior story to and much more real than the silliness of "Gump".) I will concede Hanks' portrayal of Forrest is no less than brilliant, and he was deserving of the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1994. But was this film really deserving of Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Writing? Is this film really in the same league as "Schindler's List", "Ghandhi", "The Hurt Locker", and "Platoon"? I don't think so. A contrived stooge, a late 20th century throw-back to Lenny of "Of Mice and Men" ("Tell me about the rabbits, George"), enmeshed in a series of sentimentalized vignettes is nothing more than contrived farce. Does Gump represent the American ideal or fictionalized empty-headed-ness? Forrest Gump only mirrors American's insatiable appetite for the overly sentimental. Instead of telling a true human story, such as "Rain Man", about the struggles of a man verging on feeble-mindedness, the filmmakers decided to sentimentalize him and put him into the most ridiculous and unbelievable of situations. Because of the fantastical nature of the entire story, I think "Gump" does a disservice to those with intellectual disabilities, although I will admit it does so inadvertently. "Rain Man" I think achieves quite the opposite.
So many of the scenes in this movie made no sense. In the opening sequence when young Forrest's legs are in braces and, inspired by the "girl next door", he begins running down a Midwest dirt road, and his braces magically come off. Oh brother. Only Hollywood could imagine something that rings of a bad "Saturday Evening Post" illustration from the 1950's. Not even Norman Rockwell would have painted something quite so contrived. Of course the "running theme" will recur toward the end of the the film. Later, despite his feeble-mindedness, he's drafted into the army where he puts his rifle together faster and better than anyone in training. He's a feeble-minded genius. Maybe an idiot-savant?
During the course of much of the film, Gump ends up involved in the most unlikely of situations. He plays football under a legendary college coach, goes to Vietnam, wins a congressional medal, meets John F Kennedy, becomes a ping-pong champion, meets John Lennon, informs on the Watergate burglars, and ends up investing his ping-pong winnings into the Apple Computer company. And then goes on a pointless "run" where all these people run after him. Or maybe this last part is realistic. Not about Forrest running but that people would follow. Obviously everybody followed Gump to the box office. And then to the Academy Awards. It's a wonder the filmmakers didn't have him take the next logical step and have him run for president. Raymond Babbitt (the autistic character from "Rain Man" played by Dustin Hoffman) could be his running mate.
The only saving grace of the film is some of the Vietnam sequences, and his relationship with Lut. Dan played by Gary Sinese, who is the other standout talent of the film. Gump's tour of duty and his relationship with Dan were far more substantive than all the rest of the movie put together. I think it would have been far more interesting and insightful if the story was about a feeble-minded man forced to fight in Vietnam rather than adding all the other asinine episodes that made me say to myself, "Oh come on..." And I liked aspects of Gump's relationship with Dan, and I wished that had been more developed rather than Gump popping up in high spots of American history. When Gump reports the Watergate burglary, I just about lost my popcorn.
The recurring theme of "Gump" is "life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.". As I have never liked most of the candies in those boxes (I always end up with the slimy gooey ones), I guess I am not the right viewer to appreciate the wonders of "Forrest Gump". I typically avoid those boxes of candies just for that reason. I want something that has a little more meat to it, a little more realism, and a little more honesty. Not just gooey caramel. Whoever wrote Forrest Gump was eating a box of these candies and decided to make a movie about it. The problem with those box of chocolates is that you know exactly what you're going to get and that's why I avoid them.