Review of Forrest Gump (1994) by Moviemaniac83 — 24 Apr 2015

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.

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.

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.