I must honestly warn you now, I really do get carried away in my review, and as such do nothing to dispel recent accusations of being in possession of a ‘potty mouth’. Like I give a fuck.

I have a new hero I call him darkofnight. For it is thanks to this wonderful human being and his excellent “Hollywood Fat Write-Off” that I finally, after all these years, have an unquestionable excuse to trash one of my least favourite films of all time.

The rules here are pretty simple: we pick a film that has been lavished by the Oscars and we hit it round the face with a crowbar, smack it in the groin, and stick the boot in while it’s been loaded into the ambulance. There are no comebacks, no faint praise, not even anything approaching a backhanded compliment, this has got to be a 100% no holds barred kicking from beginning to end.

That’s the easy part. Hell, I’m such a bitter little man that I doubt that there’s a film out there that I couldn’t give a one-star slagging off to, even if I like it or not. Depends on what mood I’m in. And some films which have been showered with awards by the Academy recently have been nothing short of diabolical, but which one’s worthy of the Crispy treatment? A Beautiful Mind was pretty shoddy stuff. Shakespeare In Love has still got to be the most bemusing winner of Best Film in a long while, except for Titanic, but I’ve already left that one for dead. Driving Miss Daisy is surely the most boring piece of wank to have ever been granted the top awards, and I bet 99% of you out there were absolutely certain that I’d have picked Star Wars as my focal point, and indeed would have been, except I don’t think even the most patient of readers could have sat through a 50-page slamming.

But, the latter aside, none of these come anywhere near the pure hatred I have for Forrest Gump, a film that not only beat out Pulp Fiction for the major honours, surely one of the greatest films ever created, but also received a staggering 13 nominations at the 1994 Academy Awards, triumphing in the categories for Best Actor (Tom Hanks); Best Director (Robert Zemeckis); Best Adapted Screenplay (Eric Roth); Best Editing; Best Visual Effects and – God it pains me to say this – Best Film.

Of course, they say that if you can’t say anything nice about something then you shouldn’t say anything at all. ‘They’ need to be fired from a cannon into a brick wall. How else is a person supposed to review a film like Forrest Gump, the most depressing, flag-waving, hopelessly sentimental, soul-destroying diabolical pile of festering horseshit if they aren’t allowed to resort to a volley of negative profanities? Because you sure as hell can’t review it any other way.

Now, I don't know about you, but I cringe everytime I hear about the phrase "Feel Good Movie of the Year." Sounds like something that plays it safe and tries to do too much, the kind of film that asks us all to pat ourselves on the back and feel good about being human. “Ignore the fact that society as we know it is a total shithole, let our film transport you to a fake utopia were everything turns out okay” you can hear the filmmakers subliminally whispering in your ears.

But my big question is what in the hell is Zemeckis of all people doing attempting to make the "Feel Good Move of the Year"? I see Zemeckis’s name on the credits, I want to see Michael J. Fox booting it through time in a DeLorean, I want to see Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn roughing each other up with spades and shotguns, I want to see cartoon rabbits squaring it up with Bob Hoskins. I do not, not even if the reward is a three hour session with Natalie Portman in a jam factory, want to see Tom Hanks lording it as a retarded Georgian misfit who manages to rewrite American history as we know it. Then again, one supposes that doing creative black comedies just doesn't cut it in this business.

Naturally, you’d have to be a person of similarly Gump-like intelligence if you don’t know the story by now: Forrest Gump is about a boy with a marginal IQ (Hanks) who lives his life for his friends and for the central character in his life, Jenny, his childhood sweetheart (Robin Wright), who insists on being a commie, fraternising with hippies, popping the occasional pill and slinking off home when she screws up.

One day he discovers that he happens to be very athletic, which according to scripter Roth is the single most important thing in life. And why is it so important? Because it gives Roth the chance to exploit the whole rags to riches, zero to hero, everyday nobody to an infamous somebody story; he becomes a football star. Just like that! A war hero in 'Nam. A table tennis champ. A successful shrimp fisherman. A guru running round the world till his beard trips him up. Just like that. The problem here is that Forrest Gump doesn't hang together as a story, and its predictability is awesome.

And it is this absolute inability or unwillingness to craft any genuine reasons for or motives behind Gump's success in life that mars this film. Although based on Winston Groom's novel, the film has all the structural refinements of a Sunday newspaper cartoon strip. Without rhyme or reason he manages to get himself inadvertently directly into the centre of some of history’s most famous events.

It seems to be enough that he blunders into things: accidentally (and not very interestingly) inventing the smiley dope face and the 'hilarious' witticism ‘Shit Happens’, telling President Kennedy that he has to take a piss in the White House, or accidentally exposing the Watergate scandal. And so it continues, with Gump managing to excel in something or other every 10 minutes or so, these wannabe awe-inspiring moments ever so desperately trying to warm us to our very cockles. Do you really need me to tell you that they don’t?

And in between this we have the moments that do their utmost best to have us reaching for the hankies. But it just doesn’t work, as Zemeckis proves himself to be woefully incapable of handling even the hokiest of melodrama, running us over with the sentiments as if they're a 10-ton truck. Every button is pushed, every mushy pink nipple squeezed, every tearduct cleared as Hanks turns into a cuddlesome bunny, almost choking on the word "choc-o-lates." And what happened to Gump’s supposedly electric love affair with Jenny, a girl who is meant to be his ever-twinkling star? Considering that she’s the second central figure in the movie, Wright is given absolutely nothing to do.

Not that you need to know too much about her anyway, because she's just there to get AIDS and get her norks out. By the time a bed-ridden Jenny says to Gump of his jog around the world, "I wish I could have been with you," anyone who's ever read even the trashiest of bargain basement romantic novels will mouth "you were" a good five seconds before he does.

Any more dirt to dish? Oh there is my pedigree chums, namely the horrendously condescending attitudes towards the mentally impaired that Forrest Gump possesses. Are we asked to feel for Gump when his only sympathetic trait is his defect? And, more importantly, why are we asked to simultaneously laugh at him for this? Is it really funny that Forrest thinks that ‘coon’ means raccoon? What’s the message here, if you're stupid, then you can have a better life?

The intransigent elements of this story are also far more offensively bigoted than anything Tarantino has ever penned: Gump basically wants to tell us that if you keep your hair short and kill people in wars in Indochina, the chances are you'll end up a millionaire; that good guys come first; that you can make it without really trying; that, deep down, the USA is full of Forrest Gumps (and Tom Hanks’s): upright and true, decent, successful and, above all, white.

And can we clear one more thing up, right now? Life is not like a box of chocolate. What kind of cretinous, fuck-knuckled philosophy is this? How can human existence as we know it be compared to a milk-based form of confectionary? You want to know how to know what’s in a box of chocolates? Look at the goddamn itinerary they supply for you. Is it just me? Am I the only person who didn’t fall for this pathetically shallow value? What is it with these pompous ‘cinema auteur’ twats who sit around their decaf coffees, scratching their two day growth goatee’s and banging on about how Socrates-esque it all is? It’s not deep you pricks, it’s totally meaningless. Just thinking about it is really getting me wound up.

All that Forrest Gump really shows is how much America is losing faith in itself. That is why Forrest Gump was recognised by the Academy. How better to keep up a countries morale than applauding a film that celebrates everything it likes to believe its homeland stands for: listening to its heart and doing the right thing, as opposed to how it really is? That’s all fine and good in the USA but don’t expect the rest of us to fall for the bullshit, that’s all.


Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: VHS
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12