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It could be said that Forrest Gump is the definitive American movie. After all, it's historical, patriotic and it's got a dunce as the hero. A loving and friendly dunce, of course, played by Tom Hanks.
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.
It charts the life of Forrest, a simple man who inadvertently finds himself in heroic situations. Devoted to his Ma (by far the weakest link of the movie), he does everything from teach Elvis how to move his hips to running the length and breadth of America.
He meets some people along the way, like Sinise's gruff Captain Dan during Vietnam, but really and perhaps this is why audiences took to it. Forrest does everything for his one true love, the experimental, sad, and ultimately broken Jenny (Wright-Penn).
Whether you like it or not really comes down to one thing: how much sentimentality can you take? Because despite the excellent performances and extravagant scale, Zemeckis has his finger well and truly on the nostalgia button. And then there's the affirmation of the American Dream: isn't it great that even a dolt, as long as he's kind and loving, can make it in the fantastic US of A?
