Once again, Roger Ebert and me have very similar thoughts on movies. Below is his review of Forrest Gump and much of it matches up with my thoughts of the movie. He mentions the special effects that I thought were very realistic and cool, as well as the true magic of the story. Ebert also does an excellent job of summarizing the whole of the movie, a task that I cannot do without spoiling the whole thing.
Forrest Gump
BY
ROGER EBERT / July
6, 1994
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 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 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 straight-ahead. The performance is a breathtaking balancing act
between comedy and sadness, in a story rich in big laughs and quiet truths.
Forrest is
born to an Alabama boardinghouse owner (Sally Field) who tries to correct his posture
by making him wear braces, but who never criticizes his mind. When Forrest is
called "stupid," his mother tells him, "Stupid is as stupid
does," and Forrest turns out to be incapable of doing anything less than
profound. Also, when the braces finally fall from his legs, it turns out he can
run like the wind.
That's how
he gets a college football scholarship, in a life story that eventually becomes
a running gag about his good luck. Gump the football hero becomes Gump the
Medal of Honor winner in Vietnam, and then Gump the Ping-Pong champion, Gump
the shrimp boat captain, Gump the millionaire stockholder (he gets shares in a
new "fruit company" named Apple Computer), and Gump the man who runs
across America and then retraces his steps.
It could be
argued that with his IQ of 75 Forrest does not quite understand everything that
happens to him. Not so. He understands everything he needs to know, and the
rest, the movie suggests, is just surplus. He even understands everything
that's important about love, although Jenny, the girl he falls in love with in
grade school and never falls out of love with, tells him, "Forrest, you
don't know what love is." She is a stripper by that time.
The movie is ingenious
in taking Forrest on his tour of recent American history. The director, Robert Zemeckis, is experienced with the magic
that special effects can do (his credits include the "Back to the
Future" movies and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit"), and here he
uses computerized visual legerdemain to place Gump in historic situations with
actual people.
Forrest
stands next to the schoolhouse door with George Wallace, he teaches Elvis how to swivel
his hips, he visits the White House three times, he's on the Dick Cavett show
with John Lennon, and in a sequence that will have you rubbing your eyes with
its realism, he addresses a Vietnam-era peace rally on the Mall in Washington.
Special effects are also used in creating the character of Forrest's Vietnam
friend Lt. Dan (Gary Sinise), a Ron Kovic type who quite
convincingly loses his legs.
Using
carefully selected TV clips and dubbed voices, Zemeckis is able to create some
hilarious moments, as when LBJ examines the wound in what Forrest describes as
"my butt-ox." And the biggest laugh in the movie comes after Nixon
inquires where Forrest is staying in Washington, and then recommends the
Watergate. (That's not the laugh, just the setup.) As Forrest's life becomes a
guided tour of straight-arrow America, Jenny (played by Robin Wright) goes on a parallel tour of the
counterculture. She goes to California, of course, and drops out, tunes in, and
turns on. She's into psychedelics and flower power, antiwar rallies and
love-ins, drugs and needles. Eventually it becomes clear that between them
Forrest and Jenny have covered all of the landmarks of our recent cultural
history, and the accommodation they arrive at in the end is like a dream of
reconciliation for our society. What a magical movie.
Here's the link to the review above:
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