This summer marks the 25th anniversary of the beloved Tom Hanks/Robert Zemeckis movie “Forrest Gump,” about a dim-witted but lovable everyman and his unintentional journey through the center of pivotal events in American history. What a gem, right?
Not so much.
While “Gump” may not be as egregiously outdated as, say, “Gone with the Wind” or “Sixteen Candles,” it’s still a surprising train wreck of a film, especially in light of its six Oscars. On the occasion of its being celebrated with an outdoor screening Friday evening on the National Mall in Washington, DC, and a new Blu-ray release (in addition to returning to select theaters for a couple days in late June), let’s take a new look.
For starters, its protagonist is the worst. Not because he’s mentally challenged in some never-defined way (although this type of role is one of the most cloying members of the Oscar Bait family), but because he’s a relentless narcissist. Forrest Gump (Hanks, sporting a terrible haircut and making his eyes as beady as possible) narrates the entire movie while waiting at a bus stop, telling his life story to anyone with the bad luck to sit down next to him. He makes your average long-talker seem tight-lipped by comparison. His first victim, a black woman who is very clearly not interested, keeps attempting to bury herself in her magazine while Forrest tries to remember his first pair of shoes. Out loud.
The poor lady’s side-eye is all the more understandable when he tells her the origins of his name: His ancestor is Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate army general and a founder of — I’m not making this up — the Ku Klux Klan. “The Forrest part was to remind me that, well, sometimes we all do things that don’t make no sense.”
Wait, WHAT? Yes, Forrest Gump’s mother (Oscar winner Sally Field, no less) explains away the KKK by saying everybody just does random stuff sometimes. She might as well have said there were good people on both sides.
Things don’t get any better from there. When Mrs. Gump — depicted as nothing less than saintly throughout — is informed by a principal that her son’s low IQ means he’ll have to go to a “special school,” she sleeps with the official to get her kid a spot in the regular class. “Your momma sure does care about your schooling, son,” he says merrily upon departing their house in the dead of night.
Forrest’s mama also gives him weirdly misleading advice. “Vacation is when you go somewhere and don’t ever come back,” she tells him at one point. Again, what?
“Forrest Gump” is often mentioned alongside 1979’s “Being There,” another movie about a simpleton (Peter Sellers) who stumbles into American celebrity through miscommunication and being in the right place at the right time. But Hal Ashby’s movie was a brutal political and cultural satire; Zemeckis’ is an all-out, red, white and blue celebration of ignorance, making the argument that there’s more virtue to be found in following orders, being generally incurious and spouting aphorisms than in being politically active or ambitious in any way or, God forbid, adventurous (especially sexually).
Because let’s talk about Forrest’s ostensible love interest, Jenny (Robin Wright, another great performer saddled with a misogynist dud of a role). The childhood friends are “like peas and carrots” (does anyone over the age of 5 actually like this culinary combo?), but once they’re adults, she goes on to try her hand at being a singer and a Vietnam War protester, both of which she’s punished for. The former sees her playing naked at a strip club, the latter, having a pinko boyfriend who hits her. She eventually comes crawling back to her hometown in Alabama, and when Forrest takes her in, she has pity sex with him after being told he’s “not a smart man, but I know what love is.”
Re-watch this scene and feel all the icky chills as Jenny rather unenthusiastically strips off her nightgown to sleep with a man whose emotional intelligence still appears to be around age 10. For good measure, she gets pregnant, doesn’t tell Forrest about it until their son (a tiny Haley Joel Osment) is several years old and then conveniently dies of AIDS.
The film’s treatment of race, following Forrest’s name origin, isn’t any better. In one of many brushes with history, Forrest is there when Alabama Gov. George Wallace rails against integrating schools. When a redneck hisses at Forrest that they want to let “coons” into their schools, his initial response is, “When raccoons try to get onto our back porch, Mama just chases ’em off with a broom.” Hilarious! He blithely goes through his war buddy Bubba’s family history of slavery with a montage of black women serving shrimp to white men. And when he strikes it rich with his shrimping business — which was entirely the late Bubba’s idea — he pats himself on the back for giving Bubba’s family a cut of the proceeds.
For a seemingly simple guy, Forrest is way into profit, and keeping tabs on who’s making it: His life story is also a laundry list of other people getting rich off his ideas, from Elvis’ being inspired by young Forrest’s leg-brace dance moves to his inadvertently inspiring the “S–t Happens” bumper sticker and the iconic happy-face T-shirt during his running phase.
He’s less concerned with politics: When reporters ask him if he’s running for world peace, or the environment or any other cause, he shrugs it off: “I just felt like running.” Anyone, really, who sets foot in the political protest arena is a loser, from Jenny’s abusive boyfriend to the bloviating Black Panthers they meet, to the amputee veteran Lt. Dan (Gary Sinise, yet another fine actor doing his best), who’s portrayed as a hot mess until he stops being so gosh-darned angry about the war that put him in a wheelchair. Once he makes “his peace with God,” he turns up with new titanium legs, a partner and a big smile. See, everything’s better if you just go along and don’t complain so much!
The movie even makes a case for the virtues of bullying: Being chased both as a child and a teen by awful classmates makes Forrest a terrific runner, and eventually gets him a football scholarship to college. It’s a perfect illustration of the retro belief that being bullied builds character.
And finally, oy, the sayings. “Stupid is as stupid does” does not, at its core, really mean anything. “That’s all I have to say about that” is kind of rich coming from a guy nobody asked in the first place. But the “Gump” quote that’s best known, the one about life, is especially vapid. Every box of chocolates comes with a guide — so you only “never know what you’re going to get” if you don’t learn how to read.