Forrest Gump with A-levels

Rating: 4/10 (4 February 2009)

Good lord, this was so pretentious, it hurt. TCCOBB is the absolute dictionary definition of "self-important. Confusing length with quality seems to be an increasingly common problem (see also Dark Knight, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood), and when it's 2 and a half hours of sixth-form debating society-quality cod-philosophising, it simply won't do. Of course it looks amazing at times, and the set design/attention to detail is pretty impressive, but the same could be said of any number of recent films at which a large CGI/SFX budget is thrown (parts of "Hotel for Dogs", for example...). Other reviewers seem to have seen this as some sort of perfectly encapsulated and realised life-lesson/fable; if so, you must have led very insular lives so far.