Forrest Gump Film Review

Forrest Gump

1994: Robert Zemeckis

Cast:
Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump
Robin Wright as Jenny

Gary Sinise as Lieutenant Dan

Sally Field as Mrs. Gump

Mykelti Williamson as Bubba (Benjamin Buford Blue)

(see film summary at the bottom of the page)

Forrest Gump, an Academy Award and critically acclaimed movie, in my opinion, can be summarized as “stupid is as stupid does”. The movie follows Forrest Gump, a lovable, slow-witted man who’s misunderstanding of social norms at inappropriate times will lead you gripping at your stomach with laughter. Even after watching him for about the 40^th time running across fields and meadows and embarrassing himself on national television, it’ll still leave you splitting at your sides.  Besides it’s humour, you’ll also have the utmost pleasure of watching Forrest cry Jenn-ay for 20 minutes straight until a mental breakdown leads him running across America inspiring the many he meets along the way that the 4 years you spend in college to receive your degree are worthless. It’s no wonder how this 2+ hour movie was able to snatch up more Oscars than references in the movie nobody gets who’s under 30.  Forrest Gump is a brilliant piece of work that through it’s intricate storytelling, it inspires us all to ignore our college educations or skip higher education altogether and start a random career like shrimp boating that would make any etsy-fused, hippy parents happy*.  All in all, if you’d like to watch a movie that makes you dare to dream about having an unsteady career and failed love life until the woman of your dreams needs you to adopt her son, then this movie is for you.

Although loved by millions, I fail to see the charm from his movie. Of course I could go into this huge speech on how despite his disabilities Forrest Gump lead an amazing life and that inspired me to be a better person, but you can literally not go a day without some soccer mom shoving a pamphlet into your face on how special every person is.  I just don’t care anymore. I feel that this movie is as original as a cheap, cardboard gas station birthday card. Now, before someone sets the dogs out on me, yes of course I hadn’t seen a movie where a man spends his youth shaking his hips for Elvis Presley and then grows up to be a shrimp boat captain before Forrest Gump, but I feel that with movies like Forrest Gump, someone can just take the story, change the names of the characters and where they live and rebrand it as The Fault in our Stars or something. The entire movie is so predictable. Now, yes of course I didn’t know Forrest Gump was going to grow up to become a Ping-Pong champion at the start of the movie, but the entire movie Forrest would have something mediocre, an obstacle, and then his entire life would suddenly becoming amazing. For example, his leg brace: his leg brace caused him to be made fun of, and whilst he was running away from bullies, his leg brace broke off. Now, miraculously after having insanely stiff legs that could barely bend at the knees, once the brace popped of, it was like Husain Bolt possessed him. Fast forward through his life a few years later when he was captain of a shrimp boat, he and Dan were having no luck collecting shrimp, but then suddenly his guardian angel swooped in again, destroyed the only source of income in a very unsteady looking region and probably left thousands struggling on foot stamps, but Forrest was finally able to catch some finger food so it’s okay. I guess this pattern was suppose to represent that life will always get better and if you see the good, good will come to you but honestly, I don’t think a good attitude means anything. No matter how hard I smile and how many punny smiling kitten t-shirts I wear, if I got bored on a Saturday afternoon and bought a shrimping boat, the only thing that would happen would be a dent in my college funds, and I’m bitter about it.   like this just set people up for failure. I mean, my sister and I saw Spy Kids together and we really wanted to join gymnastics after it, but the only thing that happened was after like 3^rd class, the gymnastics centre gave me a skin infection and it wasn’t some behind a butcher shop back alley sort of thing, it was a proper athletic centre we went to.

Maybe I didn’t really enjoy Forrest Gump because I couldn’t find it relatable. In one moment of the film, Forrest talks about how “life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get”. Of course that is a lovely sentiment that represents how we can’t predict our future, and although that goes great on a T-shirt, I don’t think it really has a place in modern day society. Today children are born and have their entire future planned out so they can get into a good university so they can achieve a good job and then do the same for their children. There is nothing unpredictable. I mean, whether a tiger mom forces her child to play the piano or violin can vary, but I think the majority of us won’t have a life that starts with a leg brace and football and ends with a shrimping business and a hidden son. Forrest Gump could be a dramatization of the different periods and things people go through during their lives, but I think the majority of us are happy with achieving mediocrity. Maybe people like Forrest Gump because it dares you to dream about what your life could be.

With my handy-dandy Google skills and my terrific brain, I think we can come to the conclusion that the main theme of the movie was that you could overcome any challenges that came your way and succeed. You could succeed like Forrest did with his physical and mental challenges and live a successful and eventful life. I guess the moral of the story would be to just roll, or should I say run, with what life gives you (ba dum tiss). Like I said in previous paragraphs, this is evident from when Forrest overcomes his leg brace and grows to be a fantastic runner that lands him a spot into a good university and from when his shrimping boat business, after long periods of dry spells with no catches, suddenly becomes very successful. Most meaningfully, I think this is also displayed with Forrest’s always-positive attitude. It feels as if Forrest has a blanket over his eyes the entire film where he can only see the good, not the bad. This caused many to become irritated with him like Lieutenant Dan over his legs and loss of military career, but many he met grew to look past his disabilities and like him due to his personality. He always as good intentions, but he isn’t always able to display it, which was evident when he attacked Jenny’s boyfriend at her university. Overall, although I feel that the “over-coming obstacles” theme of a movie is really overplayed and cliché, the movie can be inspiring for some to love people the way Forrest did and always see the bright side.

Throughout the movie, I thought the acting and scenes were fine, just with the message of you can do anything, it felt really overplayed and just boring. This had been my 5^th or 6^th time watching the movie and the only thing that was running through my head during the movie was how I could fall asleep without Ms. Kilgour noticing. There were moments though, throughout the movie, which I really appreciated for Forrest Gump’s innocence. My favourite scene, although short, would have to be when Forrest Gump offered Lieutenant Dan

ice cream. I thought it was so charming and really showed how Forrest was always looking out for others, even when the only thing he had to give was a frozen treat. That was a scene that made me smile and I felt like Forrest, although as generic as my sweatpants from Costco, was a really big sweet heart which relates to his personality I described in the paragraph above.I find it interesting how Forrest Gump the movie and it’s production also relates to his (Forrest’s) life in the movie. Whilst typing away at my computer, I discovered that many actors rejected Forrest Gump because they thought it wasn’t going to be a success but it went on to win 6 Oscars and a spot in the IMDb top 250 movies. I guess in a way this projects into how not much was expected of the actual Forrest Gump (in the movie) but he went on to achieve greatness: much like this movie. I also appreciate the attention to  in this movie. Lieutenant Dan’s legs that were animated to be cut off looked really realistic, Bubba’s prosthetic lip to give him his look looked like the actor had been born with it, and Forrest’s appearances in old television, although some critics squawk that it wasn’t good enough, I felt complimented the movie nicely. The realism displayed in this movie shows in the many Oscar’s they were able to snatch up, but this realism also came at price for many actors. Mykelti Williamson, the man who played Bubba, went on a bit of a dry spell after the movie in his career. The movie was a huge success, but many casting agents believed that he really was Bubba: a bit of a local idiot that the casting crew was able to roll off the street and into his movie, but he was actually a credible actor playing a character (who would’ve thought, an actor of all people). Although this movie was a huge success, it’s popularity acted as a peak in some of the actor’s careers where everything went downhill from there.

Now, the last thing I’d like to discuss is the feather in the movie. Although only floating around for a few seconds of screen time, it was apparently important enough for Wikipedia to dedicate a section to it**. Now, although you can tell its significant as the music plays and the feather dances in the air which was probably another lengthy animation process the crew went through to create it, but in my analysis I discovered that the feather floating in the wind of life is also another way to represent how you never know where life will take you, similar to the box of chocolates. Although only a small part of the movie, it acts as a summary of a movie showing that, like Forrest, you’re a feather floating in the wind waiting to land in a shrimping business or a war, wherever life will take you. Although I don’t respect that message, I believe that life can be easily planned out and the only spur of the moment decisions you need are what flavour of frozen yogurt to get, this movie is one that we can watch throughout our mediocre lives that will make you dare to dream about how significant we are.

            Thank you.

*Not to say that it isn’t an honest career

**Not that I would use Wikipedia as a credible source for information

Summary of the movie (background information):

The movie starts in 1981 where we meet Forrest Gump: he’s sitting at a bus stop with his small suitcase in one hand and box of chocolates in the other. To pass the time whilst waiting for his bus to take him to his friend Jenny, he begins telling his life story to strangers. Starting with his childhood, he recollects his young life and majorly, the first day of school where he met Jenny whom he was immediately taken with. They grow up to have a strong friendship and during childhood, as he runs away from school bullies, his leg brace brakes off revealing that he can run very fast. This running proves to be useful to him for it earns him a scholarship to the University of Alabama to play football. After receiving his degree, Forrest joins the United States Army where he serves in Vietnam. There, he meets Bubba, a past shrimp fisherman and they quickly form a tight bond and make a plan to go into the shrimping business once they are deployed from Vietnam. One day though, whilst Forrest and Bubba are on patrol with their platoon, they are attacked. Forrest, with his running skills, makes it away untouched from the firing, but once he realizes Bubba is nowhere to be found, he goes back to find him and manages to rescue four of his platoon members, including Lieutenant Dan, his leader, who demands to be left behind but Forrest carries him away anyways. Forrest does not reach Bubba in time and unfortunately, he does not make it, but for his courage, Forrest receives the Medal of Honour. Lieutenant Dan looses both of his legs due to the attack and carries a resentment and anger towards Forrest. Following this, Forrest Gump invests his time into Ping-Pong gaining enough skill to travel to China to compete for the United States army and this talent brings fame which is displayed in his interview on The Dick Cavett Show next to John Lennon. After this interview, he comes into contact with Lieutenant Dan who has become an angry alcoholic living off of government money. They celebrate New Years together and when Forrest reveals his plan to still carry out Bubba’s plan to join the shrimping business, Lieutenant Dan finds it ridiculous and promises to be his first mate if he ever does. Forrest later is placed out of service from the military, ending his Ping-Pong career. Forrest then uses the ping pong advertisement money he’s gained to start a shrimping business. Dan joins Forrest as first mate and their efforts turn out to be less than bountiful. Then, after Hurricane Carmen wipes out all other shrimping boats but their own, their business prospers. Forrest later returns home to care for his dying mother and he leaves the company in Dan’s hands. Dan invests both of them into Apple the computer company making both of them very wealthy. Jenny then returns to Forrest and they spend a short while together but after Forrest proposes to her and she refuses, they spend one romantic night together and then she leaves. Forrest, unknowing what to do, spends the next 3 years running across the country causing him to become another household name. After he ends his marathon, he receives a letter from Jenny asking to meet him. Then, we are brought up to speed of Forrest waiting for the bus to bring him to Jenny. Forrest meets Jenny at her apartment and he is introduced to their son and they start a family again together in Greenbow, Alabama. Jenny dies from disease shortly after they are married and Forrest spends the rest of his time caring for his son.

Works Cited

"15 Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About Forrest Gump." ShortList Magazine. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2015. <http://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/films/15-things-you-%28probably%29-didnt-know-about-forrest-gump#>.

"Here's Everything You Never Knew About 'Forrest Gump'" AOL Moviefone. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2015. <http://news.moviefone.ca/2014/07/04/forrest-gump-facts/>.