Forrest Gump
“FORREST GUMP”
(1994)
Film Review
Starring: Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump), Robin Wright (Jenny Curran), Gary Sinise (Lt. Dan), Mykelti Williamson (Bubba)…
”Life is like a box of chocolates.
You never know what you’re gonna get.”
I've never met anyone like Forrest Gump in a movie before, and for that matter I've never seen a movie quite like "Forrest Gump." Any attempt to describe him will risk making the movie seem more conventional than it is, but let me try. It's a comedy, I guess. Or maybe a drama. Or a dream. The majority of the movie takes place in flashback form from Tom Hanks narrating the events in Forest Gump's life. Nominated for 13 Oscars and winning six, including Best Picture, Best Director for Robert Zemeckis and Best Actor, "Gump" captured the imagination with its mix of comedy, drama, issues like AIDS and war, while managing to maintain a love story at its big budget core. The screenplay by Eric Roth has the complexity of modern fiction, not the formulas of modern movies. Its hero, played by Tom Hanks, is a thoroughly decent man with an IQ of 75, who manages between the 1950s and the 1980s to become involved in every major event in American history and who is named after one of his ancestors who was in the KKK. And he survives them all with only honesty and niceness as his shields. And yet this is not a heartwarming story about a mentally retarded man. That cubbyhole is much too small and limiting for Forrest Gump. The movie is more of a meditation on our times, as seen through the eyes of a man who lacks cynicism and takes things for exactly what they are. Watch him carefully and you will understand why some people are criticized for being "too clever by half." Forrest is clever by just exactly enough. Tom Hanks may be the only actor who could have played the role. I can't think of anyone else as Gump, after seeing how Hanks makes him into a person so dignified, so
(1994)
Film Review
Starring: Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump), Robin Wright (Jenny Curran), Gary Sinise (Lt. Dan), Mykelti Williamson (Bubba)…
”Life is like a box of chocolates.
You never know what you’re gonna get.”
I've never met anyone like Forrest Gump in a movie before, and for that matter I've never seen a movie quite like "Forrest Gump." Any attempt to describe him will risk making the movie seem more conventional than it is, but let me try. It's a comedy, I guess. Or maybe a drama. Or a dream. The majority of the movie takes place in flashback form from Tom Hanks narrating the events in Forest Gump's life. Nominated for 13 Oscars and winning six, including Best Picture, Best Director for Robert Zemeckis and Best Actor, "Gump" captured the imagination with its mix of comedy, drama, issues like AIDS and war, while managing to maintain a love story at its big budget core. The screenplay by Eric Roth has the complexity of modern fiction, not the formulas of modern movies. Its hero, played by Tom Hanks, is a thoroughly decent man with an IQ of 75, who manages between the 1950s and the 1980s to become involved in every major event in American history and who is named after one of his ancestors who was in the KKK. And he survives them all with only honesty and niceness as his shields. And yet this is not a heartwarming story about a mentally retarded man. That cubbyhole is much too small and limiting for Forrest Gump. The movie is more of a meditation on our times, as seen through the eyes of a man who lacks cynicism and takes things for exactly what they are. Watch him carefully and you will understand why some people are criticized for being "too clever by half." Forrest is clever by just exactly enough. Tom Hanks may be the only actor who could have played the role. I can't think of anyone else as Gump, after seeing how Hanks makes him into a person so dignified, so