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Forrest Gump Reviews

Forrest was an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 3, 2024

Zemeckis has made a fast movie about a slow hero; he transforms Forrest's daffy misconceptions into lyrical flights. Forrest Gump has a softer, more delicate touch and a richer current of feeling than any of the other holy-innocent movies.

Full Review | Mar 1, 2024

What makes Forrest Gump a stunning triumph, a departure from the mediocre norm? A big reason is the way the film provides a fresh perspective on the familiar experience, through the eyes of its unforgettable protagonist.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 1, 2024

Forrest Gump isn't a movie for cynics. Instead, it's one of those rare films that seduces viewers into overlooking its faults with the sheer goodness of its heart.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Mar 1, 2024

Hanks' performance [is] a triumph of dignity, decency, and warm-hearted humor... Even more than his Oscar-winning achievement in Philadelphia, this is a role that will be remembered as long as people care about great acting.

Forrest Gump is a very fine hour for everybody involved. And it's concrete evidence that Tom Hanks is the best actor working in American film today.

Forrest Gump is for big kids what playing Nintendo is for little ones -- that is, the neato thing about Robert Zemeckis' film is the clever techno-wizardry produced by Ken Ralston and Industrial Light and Magic.

Hanks never strikes a false note, never panders to his mentally slow character nor tries to make him more than he is, despite a script that occasionally calls on him to utter what presumably are intended to be simple profundities.

There's an undeniable kick to the idea of recapitulating to the Boomerography as a tale told by an idiot, but the thrill inexorably fades.

Intended as a paean to simplicity and a meditation on the quirks of destiny, "Gump" is instead simple-minded and calculated, a cloying, reactionary fable in praise of stupidity.

Forrest Gump is about as good as Hollywood movies get.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 1, 2024

Hanks' immersion in character and his convincing interaction with fellow players make Forrest Gump -- gimmicks and all -- a pleasure.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 1, 2024

The best art takes the biggest chances, thereby losing people who can't stretch with it. Forrest Gump is worth the effort.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 1, 2024

Forrest Gump is going to touch a lot of people's lives. It also has a good shot at bringing Tom Hanks a second Oscar for best actor.

Loosely adapted from Winston Groom's satirical novel, Forrest Gump provides an incredibly rich and daffy historical pastiche.

Forrest Gump is a rare treat: a movie that delivers a message of hope and faith without delving into preachiness. Much of that success is due to Hanks' majestically deadpan performance.

It turns tedious toward the end... But when it's good, it's very good, and the way it blends star Tom Hanks, who plays the title character, into actual historical film footage will tickle you to no end.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 1, 2024

Forrest Gump manages to examine some of the basic questions of human life and to add perspective to the two most disruptive decades in modern history.

Director Robert Zemeckis is no stranger to spectacular effects. But seldom do knockout technology, superb acting and witty writing meld so satisfactorily.

It requires a delicate touch to keep from becoming precious. Director Robert Zemeckis is up to the task.

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, forrest gump.

Now streaming on:

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 challenged 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.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Forrest Gump (1994)

Rated PG-13 For Drug Content, Sensuality and War Violence

135 minutes

Robin Wright as Jenny Curran

Gary Sinise as Lt. Dan

Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump

Directed by

• Robert Zemeckis

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Forrest Gump (United States, 1994)

Since its theatrical release in the summer of 1994, Forrest Gump has become one of those movies seemingly everyone is familiar with. It's a cultural touchstone with lines like "Life is a box of chocolates" appearing everywhere from tee-shirts to greeting cards. The film's popularity was italicized by the way it rampaged through the 1995 Oscars, winning six awards (including the "big three" of Best Picture, Director, and Actor). Now, for its 20th anniversary, the decision has been made to do something Hollywood almost never does during the home video era: a big screen re-release.

How to get people into theaters to watch (or re-watch) Forrest run when it's a lot easier to do it at home? Enter the IMAX gimmick. Calling it anything less crass would be dishonest since there's no inherent reason why Forrest Gump should be bulked up for IMAX (or pseudo-IMAX, depending on how one views the smaller AMC version of the product). Still, commercial considerations aside, there's something majestic about watching this tall tale unfold on a larger screen than one can find in the average family room. The IMAX format is a nice way to entice some viewers to see the movie in a theater while maintaining the original composition.

The original review holds up today because, unlike some decades-old motion pictures, this one doesn't seem dated. It wears its age well. Here's what I wrote in 1994 when the movie was first released:

Ever find the grind of life getting you down? Is the day-to-day struggle threatening to drag you under? If so, there is a movie out there that can replenish your energy and refresh your outlook. Passionate and magical, Forrest Gump is a tonic for the weary of spirit. For those who feel that being set adrift in a season of action movies is like wandering into a desert, the oasis lies ahead.

Back when Tom Hanks' movie career was relatively new, the actor made a film called Big, which told the story of a young boy forced to grow up fast as a result of an ill-advised wish made at a carnival. In some ways, Forrest Gump represents a return to the themes of that earlier movie. In this case, the main character remains a child in heart and spirit, even as his body grows to maturity. Hanks is called upon yet again to play the innocent.

Forrest Gump (Hanks), named after a civil war hero, grows up in Greenbow, Alabama, where his mother (Sally Field) runs a boarding house. Although Forrest is a little "slow" (his IQ is 75, 5 below the state's definition of "normal"), his mental impairment doesn't seem to bother him, his mother, or his best (and only) friend, Jenny Curran (played as an adult by Robin Wright). In fact, the naiveté that comes through a limited understanding of the world around him gives Forrest a uniquely positive perspective on life. Across the span of the next thirty years, Forrest becomes a star football player, a war hero, a successful businessman, and a pop icon. Through it all, however, there is one defining element in his life: his love for Jenny. She is never far from his thoughts, no matter what he's doing or where he is.

A trio of assets lifts Forrest Gump above the average "life story" (melo)drama: its optimism, freshness, and emotional honesty. Though the movie does not seek to reduce every member of the audience to tears, it has moments whose power comes from their simplicity. Equally as important is laughter, and Forrest Gump has moments of humor strewn throughout.

During the 60s and 70s, no topic more inflamed the turbulent national consciousness than that of Vietnam and those who were sent overseas to fight. Forrest, as might be expected, has a singular viewpoint on his time spent there: "We took long walks and were always looking for this guy named Charlie." This observation emphasizes the essence of the title character's nature.

Through the miracle of visual effects, Forrest meets his fair share of famous people - George Wallace, Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, and John Lennon. While mixing the real footage of these notables with new images featuring Hanks is not a seamless process, the result is nevertheless effective. (This is a precursor of what would become commonplace in future films as the effects work employed here became refined.)

Forrest Gump has several messages, few of which require much digging into the subtext to unearth. The most frequently recurring theme is an admonition not to give up on life. Why surrender when you don't know what lies ahead? By contrasting Forrest's life with the lives of those around him, and by showing how the passage of time brings solace to even the most embittered hearts, the movie underlines this point.

Tom Hanks won 1994's Academy Award for Philadelphia , but his performance here is more nuanced. [With Forrest Gump , he would become only the second man to win back-to-back Lead Actor Oscars, joining Spencer Tracy.] The Alabama accent may seem a little awkward at first, but it doesn't take long for the acting to dwarf the twang. Hanks fashions a human character free of guile and deceit, and barely able to comprehend a concept like evil. Robin Wright gives the best performance of her career, surpassing what she accomplished in The Playboys . Looking and seeming like a younger Jessica Lange, she is believable as the object of Forrest's undying affection. The scene-stealer, however, is Gary Sinise. A renowned stage director and actor, Sinise is probably best known to film-goers (to the extent that he is known at all) for his portrayal of George in 1992's Of Mice and Men (which he also directed). In this movie, his portrayal of Lieutenant Dan Taylor is riveting. The passion and pain he brings to the middle portions of Forrest Gump hold together some of the film's weaker moments.

The soundtrack boasts a variety of sounds of the era - perhaps too wide a variety. Often, music can be useful in establishing a mood, but Forrest Gump rockets into the realm of overkill. There are sequences when the choice of song is inspired (the use of "Running on Empty" for Forrest's "long run" comes to mind), but the soundtrack could have used a little pruning. There are times when it seems as much designed to sell CDs as to cement the setting.

Ultimately, however, any such gripes about Forrest Gump are minor. This is a marvelous motion picture -- a mint julep on a hot summer's afternoon.

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Forrest Gump (1994)

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Forrest gump, common sense media reviewers.

Moving and wonderful, but parent preview a good idea.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Stresses importance of family, friendship, and loy

Forrest, through his big heart, seems to bring out

Forrest's friends Bubba and Lt. Dan Taylor are Bla

Other kids taunt and throw rocks at young Forrest;

Jenny works as an adult performer at one point, pl

Language includes "s--t," "f--k" (a couple of time

Brand names (like Apple) are mentioned, but genera

A central character takes lots of drugs during one

Parents need to know that Forrest Gump is an Oscar-winning film by Robert Zemeckis (based on the novel by Winston Groom) that follows the title character (Tom Hanks) through his brushes with important people and moments in U.S. history. Expect strong language ("s--t," "f--k," and more), violence (including…

Positive Messages

Stresses importance of family, friendship, and loyalty. Serious issues like child abuse and war are addressed. Other major themes include gratitude, integrity, and perseverance.

Positive Role Models

Forrest, through his big heart, seems to bring out the best in people. He stumbles into much of his good luck serendipitously, but he also works hard and devotes himself to whatever he's focused on. Other characters have more complex motivations and backstories, but Forrest helps keep them pointed in the right direction.

Diverse Representations

Forrest's friends Bubba and Lt. Dan Taylor are Black and disabled, respectively, each positive but with stereotypical traits (Bubba's actor wore a prosthetic to have a bigger lower lip; the wheelchair-using veteran is implied to be self-destructive with suicidal ideation). Jenny often needs to be rescued by Forrest and isn't given much agency. As a child, Forrest is "miraculously" healed from a spine illness; the scene of him shedding his leg braces as he sets off into a run is ableist.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Other kids taunt and throw rocks at young Forrest; he's insulted throughout his life for having a low IQ score. Fistfights and explosive/bloody Vietnam War combat scenes. The scene in which young Jenny hides from her abusive father is disturbing, as are a couple of major characters' deaths. Serious wounds from war. Implied sexual abuse of children. Historical events discussed or alluded to include assassinations. It's implied that characters have suicidal ideation.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Jenny works as an adult performer at one point, playing guitar naked (she's covered by the instrument from the front, but you can see her nude from the back). Foreplay includes Forrest putting his hand on a woman's breast while her roommate is in the room (the outline of her breast and her naked backside are seen). Kissing/groping, women in their underwear. Lt. Dan and Forrest are seen shirtless, and adults have sex in a non-explicit scene. Characters look at a pornographic magazine, but no nude pictures are shown in detail. A child overhears the sounds of two adults having sex.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Language includes "s--t," "f--k" (a couple of times), "goddamn," "ass," and more, as well as insults like the "N" word, "stupid," and "idiot."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Brand names (like Apple) are mentioned, but generally within a specific historical/cultural context.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A central character takes lots of drugs during one part of the movie, with cocaine, bongs, pill bottles, needles, and pipes visible. Other characters drink and smoke cigarettes.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Forrest Gump is an Oscar-winning film by Robert Zemeckis (based on the novel by Winston Groom) that follows the title character ( Tom Hanks ) through his brushes with important people and moments in U.S. history. Expect strong language ("s--t," "f--k," and more), violence (including bloody/explosive Vietnam War scenes and child abuse), and drug use (cocaine is seen, and characters drink and smoke cigarettes). There are sexual situations (foreplay, kissing, implied sex, the outline of a breast and a backside, and more) but nothing explicit. Despite the mature content, its positive messages and entertaining take on modern American history make it a fine choice for families with teens. Black and disabled characters are featured in a positive light, but they also perpetuate stereotypes. Women, especially Forrest's love, Jenny ( Robin Wright ), are given no agency. Parents may want to preview the movie for its treatment of serious topics like abuse, the civil rights movement, drugs, and war. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (73)
• Kids say (292)

Based on 73 parent reviews

A great movie but not for young teens, skip the sex scenes, drug scenes, and prostitute scenes. This film is able to make the audience cry with tears!!!

Great movie for teens, what's the story.

FORREST GUMP tells the story of the title character ( Tom Hanks ), a childlike man who unknowingly takes part in some of the most significant moments in modern American history, sometimes becoming an accidental hero. Forrest dreams of being reunited with his lifelong love Jenny ( Robin Wright ), who seems to become more elusive as they age.

Is It Any Good?

This film serves up an abundance of surprising treats, sometimes sweet and sometimes bitter. Though its strong language, violence, and sexual situations make it iffy for young children, Forrest Gump can introduce teens to prominent moments in 20th century United States. Through the use of Oscar-winning visual effects, Forrest interacts with U.S. presidents, accidentally uncovers the Watergate scandal, and inspires John Lennon to write the song "Imagine." Although mostly witty, the film's tongue-in-cheek rewriting of major U.S. events often erases the contributions of Black Americans, such as attributing Elvis Presley's famous "pelvis dance" to Forrest, rather than to the Black musicians that Elvis was inspired by in real life.

The encounters sometimes border on the absurd, but they're anchored by Hanks' extraordinary performance. He makes Forrest a sympathetic character instead of a stereotype of someone with a learning disability. Superb acting by the entire cast, especially Wright as Jenny and Gary Sinise as Forrest's Army lieutenant, adds substance to this sentimental tearjerker.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about American history and how it's seen through Forrest Gump's eyes. Are historical events depicted in an accurate way? Should movies depict history accurately, or are they allowed poetic license?

Which historical events before your time would you have liked to be a part of? Which characters from history would you like to meet?

What would you say Forrest Gump 's main message is? Are viewers meant to admire Forrest? To sympathize with him?

How do the characters in Forrest Gump demonstrate integrity , perseverance , and gratitude ? Why are these important character strengths?

Movie Details

• In theaters : July 6, 1994
• On DVD or streaming : September 30, 2014
• Cast : Robin Wright , Sally Field , Tom Hanks
• Director : Robert Zemeckis
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Paramount Pictures
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Book Characters , History
• Character Strengths : Gratitude , Integrity , Perseverance
• Run time : 135 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : drug content, sensuality and war violence
• Awards : Academy Award , Golden Globe
• Last updated : January 17, 2024

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‘forrest gump’: thr’s 1994 review.

On July 6, 1994, Paramount unveiled the Robert Zemeckis film in theaters.

By Duane Byrge

Duane Byrge

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On July 6, 1994, Paramount unveiled Robert Zemeckis ‘ Forrest Gump in theaters. The Tom Hanks satire would go on to win six Oscars at the 67th Academy Awards, including best picture. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review is below:

Forrest Gump is not stupid. Although his IQ is 75, he sees the world far clearer than most. Through his decent, childlike eyes, we too see things in a less confused and muddled way. In this cheerfully straight-arrow moral tale, Tom Hanks stars as the “wise fool” Forrest Gump and delivers yet another Oscar-level performance. Paramount will win sensational box office with this Robert Zemeckis-directed  film.

Raised in the ‘ 50s in rural Alabama by a single mother (Sally Field), Forrest, being “different,” must fend for himself, struggling against not only perceived expectations but boyhood bullies. He unwittingly finds that he’s blessed with a talent — he can run like the wind, which wins him a football scholarship to play for Bear Bryant at the University of Alabama. And there’s no stopping him after that.

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'deadwood': thr's 2004 review, 'family guy': thr's 1999 review.

An uplifting saga about one young boy’s earnest and good-natured attempts to overcome his disabilities, Forrest Gump is also a cheeky social satire of the past 40 years of U.S. social-political history. Eric Roth’s screenplay, adapted from Winston Groom’s novel, nimbly intertwines Forrest’s life with the seminal social events and players of the past several decades. Unassuming Forrest, with his golly-gee enthusiasm and inbred decency, encounters the likes of Elvis, George Wallace, presidents Kennedy through Nixon, Dick Cavett , John Lennon and Abbie Hoffman as he graduates from ‘ Bama , fights in Vietnam, competes in international ping-pong, founds a shrimping company, engages in philanthropy and jogs cross-country.

Contrasting Forrest’s unassuming innocence with the upheavals and rancor of the times, the film is a wisely goofy commentary on the stupidity of smartness.

While Forrest’s foray’s into the dens of the big and powerful are cheekily amusing, the film ambles along over a deeper, darker layer: Forrest’s love for his childhood girlfriend, Jenny (Robin Wright). An abused child, Jenny’s life path is a desperate wander to find solid ground. She falls prey to every social movement and fad of the times; unlike Forrest, whose unwavering strength and sense of right and wrong protect him from being caught up in social slides, Jenny’s genuflections reflect her lack of firm values and inner confidence.

To some extent, one could argue that Jenny symbolizes most of us. If any criticism might be leveled at the film, it is that its most heart-wrenching moments are too adeptly skirted, but, then again, that’s in keeping with Forrest’s strength. Highest praise to Zemeckis , who has reached a higher maturity plane with his gracefully, technically eloquent direction.

Carrying his torso in an erect, straight-arched manner, Hanks’ body language is all-telling. With each strange or perplexing situation, Hanks erupts with the smallest twitch or turn, signaling Forrest’s deep-seated disapproval or, in special other cases, his gleeful, thankful wonderment. Mykelti Williamson, as Forrest’s simple-minded G.I. buddy, is also outstanding, while Gary Sinise is sympathetic as Forrest’s bitter platoon leader, legless after the Vietnam War. — Duane Byrge , originally published on June 29, 1994. 

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Forrest gump: 25th anniversary blu-ray review.

Forrest Gump — 25th Anniversary — (1994)

Genre(s): Drama, Comedy, Romance Paramount | PG13 – 141 min. – $14.99 | May 7, 2019

Date Published: 06/04/2019 | Author: The Movieman

Paramount Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this Blog Post. The opinions I share are my own.

Check out some more 1080p screen caps by going to page 2. Please note, these do contain spoilers .

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• Entertainment

Show Business: The World According to Gump

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You see them — folks of all ages and both sexes — floating out of the movie theater on waves of honorable sentiment. The kids look thoughtful, the grownups wistful. Couples are holding hands. This is not a Speed crowd; these people haven’t just exited a roller-coaster movie — they’ve completed an upbeat encounter session with America’s recent past. No question: one more audience has been Gumped.

Forrest Gump , a romantic epic starring Tom Hanks as a slow but sweet-souled Alabama boy who lucks into nearly every headline event of the past 40 years, is the summer sensation: a popular hit and an instant cultural touchstone. As the film’s director, Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit), says, Gump has “no typical storytelling devices: no villain, no ticking clock, no burning fuse.” Yet it has exploded at the North American box office. In its second week of release, when ticket sales for even the most robust hits drop perhaps 20%, Gump held even. This past weekend it reached the $100 million mark; an industry savant predicts, quite conservatively, that it will finally earn $165 million.

Gump has warmed the collective heart of moviegoers; they spread the word, command their friends to go. They storm music stores for the two-CD album, featuring 32 songs from the rock era. They snap up copies of Winston Groom’s 1986 novel, on which the film was based, and copies of Gumpisms: The Wit and Wisdom of Forrest Gump , a pocket-size book of aphorisms from the novel. Then they run back to the theater to relive the experience. “It makes you look at things in a better way than you used to,” says W. Bart Edwards, a Gainsville, Florida, psychiatrist who worked in a veterans’ hospital and sees the film as a salve for Vietnam survivors. “It’s like a happy tear-jerking.”

Vietnam is just one nightmare in Forrest’s odd odyssey. Born with a 75 IQ and deemed an embarrassment by everyone except his loving mother (Sally Field), the boy discovers two things: he can run like a gale-force wind, and he will always love his neighbor Jenny (Robin Wright). He goes to war with one friend, a young black man (Mykelti Williamson) dreaming of shrimp boats, and comes home with another, career soldier Dan Taylor (Gary Sinise). And wherever he is, he bumps into famous people: George Wallace and Richard Nixon, J.F.K. and L.B.J., Elvis and John Lennon (all integrated onscreen with Hanks through ingenious special effects). Almost everyone Forrest knows dies. He survives, through his goodness and the miracle of idiot grace.

“I don’t want to sound like a bad version of ‘the child within,”‘ says co- producer Wendy Finerman, who discovered the novel in galleys nine years ago and nurtured the film to fruition. “But the childlike innocence of Forrest Gump is what we all once had. It’s an emotional journey. You laugh and cry. It does what movies are suppose to do: make you feel alive.”

The movie does that. It is a smart, affecting, easygoing fable with plenty of talent on both sides of the camera. The key ingredient is Hanks, the one actor whom the mass audience trusts as an exemplar of quality. He can sell a tough subject to tough customers because they know the film will not be so much about issues as about the decency with which his character faces up to them. That goes for Gump. “The film is nonpolitical,” Hanks says, “and thus nonjudgmental. It doesn’t just celebrate survival, it celebrates the struggle.”

Classically trained and sitcom-bred, Hanks knows that the starkest drama can always use a leavening of wit. For most of the film, he underplays Forrest’s reactions at a level somewhere between a fretful deadpan and the rural slyness of the early Andy Griffith. So when he releases his feelings at the end (when questions of fatherhood and family traits are involved), the scene gushes like a geyser.

So does the audience. “I want to stand up and yell, ‘Go, Gump, go!”‘ says Chris Jackson, a Chicago bartender. “I sat there with tears dripping down my face.” This is the common testimony: cheering and tearing. “People cheered at our audience-research sessions,” says Finerman, “so we knew we had something. What amazed us was that all four quadrants — older men and women, younger men and women — wanted to see it.” That’s another clue to Gumpmania: it’s a movie that makes grown men cry. From I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang to Field of Dreams, the male weepie has been a dependable genre. And Gump, to its credit, is not one of those cry-by-night (but you hate yourself in the morning) exercises in emotional blackmail. It’s fairly honorable about picking your heart’s pocket.

That must be what attracted Finerman, whose eight-year crusade to make this movie is already a Hollywood legend. In retrospect, though, Forrest Gump seems a can’t-miss proposition. Consider that the only three movies of the past two decades to win both the year’s box-office crown and the Oscar for Best Picture — Rocky, Kramer vs. Kramer and Rain Man — were canny, poignant fables of men in domestic crisis. Throw in two other high-grossing Oscar winners, Platoon and Terms of Endearment, and you have the recipe for a “mature,” feel-good smash. Let’s see: retarded man, family man, Vietnam hero and lots of decent folks on their deathbeds. The movie is not only a greatest-hits rendering of 25 years of Americana, it’s a distillation of humanist culture in commercial movies.

It is also a sleek Hollywoodizing, a ruthlessly canny face-lift of Groom’s novel. In the book, Forrest was just as naive but not quite so innocent or lucky: he had some sex, did some drugs and missed out on the nuclear family that in the movie Forrest finally gets to tend. In pumping up Jenny’s role, screenwriter Eric Roth transferred all of Forrest’s flaws — and most of the excesses Americans committed in the ’60s and ’70s to her. Wright’s Jenny is a frail soul in tailspin, a battered child in a beautiful woman’s body. And Forrest is her redeemer. The suspense of the movie is whether she will allow him to save her.

Zemeckis says, without apparent irony: “I imagined Norman Rockwell painting the baby boomers.” And that is Gump : a social tragedy sanitized for a Saturday Evening Post cover. It celebrates innocence, acceptance and, not least, good manners in a tale set in the very era when Americans were supposed to have misplaced these virtues. The movie offers a cheerful alternative history — a Golden Book version — of the Vietnam War: it’s all about the emotional triumphs of these nice American soldiers, and hardly a Vietnamese even appears. There are precious few villains: only the boys who throw rocks at young Gump, Jenny’s sexually abusive father and the SDS leader who slaps her around. Everyone else is either a celebrity or a victim.

For younger viewers, then, Forrest Gump serves as a gentle introduction to the ’60s: baptism not by fire but by sound track. And to those who raged, suffered or sinned through that insane decade, the movie offers absolution with a love pat. Whaddaya know? We waged a stupid war that destroyed both another country and the best part of ourselves; we tore up our streets and our psyches in a kind of Cultural Revolution; we practically killed ourselves with drugs — and it turns out we’re not guilty. By allowing us to relive all the evils of recent history through invulnerably innocent, uncontaminated Forrest, the movie lets us achieve a vicarious virtue.Thank you, Forrest Gump . We feel so much better.

“Filmmakers often say the American public doesn’t want complicated films full of thought,” says Field, who is outstanding as the heroic mom in this edgy valentine. “They are wrong. They underestimate the intelligence of the American audience.” But does Forrest Gump make you think? No, it makes you feel — or, at best, makes you think about what you feel, and about how long it has been since a movie found those remote corners of sympathy and sentiment.

From a film industry that softens virtually any contentious social issue — aids, the Holocaust, Vietnam — into a fable with a happy ending, Forrest is the ultimate sentimental figure. He embodies that noble Hollywood precept, the spiritual superiority of the handicapped. Forrest is not the ranter on the subway or the sullen, overgrown lad at the back of the class. He is — well, just who is he?

The neat trick about Forrest is he can symbolize so many people. New York Times columnist Frank Rich has compared him to Bill Clinton. But Forrest’s simple optimism and his success as an entrepreneur and a reviver of American confidence could make him an emblem of ’80s conservatism: not only Reaganomics but what Republicans might call Reaganethics. He’s E.T. with a little Gandhi thrown in. He’s Candide making the best of the worst of all possible worlds. And in his influence on events, from the capture of the Watergate burglars to John Lennon’s composition of the song Imagine, he seems almost omnipotent. All-innocent and all-powerful, the ideal guru for the nervous ’90s: Forrest God.

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How Robert Zemeckis Nearly Declined Directing the Renowned Sci-Fi Hit “Contact”

T he iconic film “Contact,” while incorporating the classic track “Spirit in the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum—as expected from a Zemeckis film, replete with its classic rock soundtrack—was initially set to include a rather on-the-nose portrayal of extraterrestrials. In a conversation with Vulture during an oral history review of the film in 2022, Zemeckis shared the reason he was initially apprehensive about directing “Contact,” in spite of his admiration for Carl Sagan’s works:

“[…] I always shrug at the design of the aliens — how does anyone ever know what to make them look like? An early draft had the sky open up at the end and all the aliens came down to prove that Ellie’s journey was truthful. And I just said, ‘No, thank you.’”

Zemeckis’ reservations were relatable, given the myriad of cliched or overly simple alien representations in film history. Yet, armed with the creative success of “Forrest Gump,” Zemeckis felt assured that he could take creative control when “Contact” was offered to him once again. He ultimately devised an ingenious way of depicting aliens in the movie, which remains unspoiled here for new viewers.

The real strength of “Contact” lies in its ability to harmonize the themes of faith and science, an aspect that strengthens the film’s enduring resonance and underscores the height of Zemeckis’ directorial prowess.

FAQs about Robert Zemeckis’ Decision Regarding “Contact”

Zemeckis initially turned down the opportunity to direct “Contact” because he was not inspired by the alien design in the early drafts of the script, where they were to physically appear at the end of the movie.

He felt that the design choices were commonplace and unoriginal, and it was challenging to envision what aliens should look like authentically.

When Zemeckis was approached again, he had just completed “Forrest Gump” and felt confident that he would have the creative control to shape the movie, including how the aliens would be portrayed, in a way that resonated with him.

The film employs a unique approach to portraying extraterrestrial beings, which Zemeckis has deliberately kept ambiguous to avoid spoilers.

“Contact” centralizes on the coexistence between faith and reason, suggesting that they need not be conflicting ideologies.

Robert Zemeckis’ initial reluctance to direct “Contact” stemmed from a desire to avoid clichés in alien representation, preferring to innovate rather than conform. His eventual decision to take on the film highlights how essential creative control was to him, especially following the success of “Forrest Gump.” The way “Contact” broaches its subject matter is a testament to Zemeckis’ artistic ingenuity, offering an enduring narrative that thoughtfully examines the nexus between faith and science—a theme that continues to captivate audiences and celebrate Zemeckis’ directorial acumen.