A heroic fable, but nothing more.

Rating: 7/10 (29 January 2000)

I found this movie to be rather trivial and predictable. It was, in many ways, a Forrest Gump version of a prison movie. It had a manipulative and superficial plotline, and the leading character was too good to be true. It never dealt deeply with any issue at all. Basically, you liked the leading character because he was perfect, and cheered him on and hoped for his success, just like Forrest Gump. However, unlike Forrest Gump, I could never see the true emotion of the Tim Robbins character. He didn't like being sexually assaulted, but we never saw how that affected him; he didn't drink but got beers for his friends. He finds pleasure out of the simple things and doesn't like unpleasurable things. He turned out to be a perfect character with no negative qualities at all. Maybe he's this way for a reason; people can relate to him because they like to think of themselves being completely perfect and think they would make every right decision if they were in a situation like this.
In many senses, this was just a morality play, with Andy Dufresne being entirely good and all the prison officials being completely bad. I think the only reason why people enjoy this movie so much is that it has the message "Good things come to those that try and do good with their lives." However, I didn't think the movie had enough substance to offer any deeper meaning or insight. The best thing about this movie was it made me realize how great of a movie Forrest Gump is and how great of an actor Tom Hanks is. He made the Forrest Gump character seem to have a fully round personality and allowed us to understand who he was. He seemed possible. Andy seems unlikely and not relatable because we never see any reasoning behind his personality.
This movie moves people because it is a heroic fable. It's not a worthless movie experience, but it should have done more with what it already had. To the people that think this is the greatest movie ever made...spare me. My rating 4/10.