Rethinking Forrest Gump
by Scott Hardie on October 6, 2006
Inspired by a conversation this past weekend, I've been thinking about the once-popular movie Forrest Gump. It has fallen out of favor with people who prefer its contemporaries Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption and believe it robbed them of Oscars, but to me all three films are good. Gump succeeds because of a lot of factors, but consider its acting and its visual effects. I've often heard it said that a bad performance is when you're aware it's only an actor playing a role instead of disappearing into it convincingly. Tom Hanks had starred in a dozen box-office hits by that point in his career and was the reiging Best Actor from the year before, and yet despite his familiarity to millions of moviegoers, some people still believed he was genuinely retarded because he played Gump so well. That's acting! Along the same lines, the best visual effects are said to be the ones you never notice. Gary Sinise was unknown then, but some people actually thought he was a legless actor, or even more outrageously, that he actually had his legs amputated for the role! Either the acting and the special effects were so very good as to lead people to outlandish conclusions as plausible explanations for them, or the audience for the film was as dumb as its hero. Even I'm not cynical enough to believe the latter.
One Reply to Rethinking Forrest Gump
Logical Operator
The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »
Cheesed
If life is about simple pleasures, does the return of Taco Bell's chili cheese burrito qualify? I don't know if it's nationwide, but they've returned on a wave of marketing around here. It was my favorite menu item a decade ago, until lack of counter space in the kitchen eliminated chili from a supposedly "Mexican" restaurant. Go »Ten Things I Learned While Kelly's Parents Pat & Russ Spent a Week Visiting Us
• Florida reminds me of Dave Barry's quip that vacationing in Britain is great because you meet people from entirely different states. We stopped a woman to take our picture; she was visiting from New Jersey and her daughter beside her was from California. The only local we met warned us what bridge not to jump off for swimming because the water is shark-infested. Go »Heart Burn
The recurring pericarditis that I mentioned elsewhere is now believed by my primary-care doctor to be heartburn or possibly an ulcer. The latter explanation is possible I suppose, but I'm skeptical about the former since it feels less like an acidic burning than like a sharp localized lower-chest pain such as a knife wound or bullet wound. Either way, it still keeps occurring every few weeks, it still hurts like a son of a bitch and keeps me awake all night, and I'm way beyond sick of it happening. Go »Wests Take Southwest to Southeast
As Steve West mentioned, he and Brenda recently visited Sarasota for a week of fun. In advance, we rented an AirBNB (cat allergies prevented staying at my place) and kicked around some ideas for what to do, but we were concerned about unpredictable fatigue and other medical complications and knew that we had to take it one day at a time. The trip had a bumpy start, with Kelly taken by ambulance to the ER the night before (she recovered quickly) and a difficult Southwest flight and Uber pickup for the Wests, but that all quickly felt like it was behind us as soon as the fun began. Go »Not-So-Confidential to My Gaming Group
I started writing this out in an email reply to John Gunter, but I guess it should be shared. I miss gaming with you guys, but I'm on the fence about continuing. I like each of you guys a great deal, but when we're together I just don't feel the click of a connection like I used to. Go »
Kris Weberg | October 15, 2006
The acting in Forrest Gump is fine. The problem with the film is thatr, aside from being a rather nice little tour of popular accounts of American history, it doesn't really add up to much of anything. The moral seems to be that simple-minded platitudes and a certain obliviousness equate to virtue. The plot is simply a contrivance to insert Forrest into as many recent historical events as possible without having much to say about any of them.
It looks very nice and it's quite pleasant for the running time (at least on a first viewing), but it's a fairly pointless film when all is said and done. And that, more than anything else, is why its reputation has suffered in comparison to the moral challenges of Pulp Fiction and the meatier study of virtue and character in The Shawshank Redemption.