Forrest Gump Review

Since a character from this movie is covered in this blog, then I might as well get to covering this movie in this blog for a random post at some point in time. I had the chance to see this so I might as well get this done and watch the movie.

 

We begin with a man picking up a magical seeming flying feather that fell to him that is then put in his briefcase. His name is Forrest and he talks to a random woman on a bus stop bench. He offers her some chocolates. I’m not sure why he’s randomly talking to her about things.

 

Thinking back to when he was a kid, he remembers having magic shoes. He had a walking issue. He was named after the leader of the Klu Klux Klan. But people do things that don’t make sense. He is told that he is no different by his mother, but someone insists that he is different with an IQ of 75. He has a below average intelligence. The person there doesn’t want him to attend the school.

 

He is told that his father is on vacation. His mother says that vacation is when someone leaves and does not come back. There are a lot of guests that come to this house. It turns out that a man there was Elvis. Forrest sees him later on TV.

 

He continues talking despite a seeming lack of interest that others might have in what he’s talking about to them. We all know someone like that, right? He is about to board a bus, but doesn’t right away since he was told not to take rides from strangers. He learns who this person is and then gets on the bus. But different boys on the bus don’t want him to sit next to them. A girl named Jenny offers him her seat. And that’s one of the many reasons why females are better than males.

 

Jenny and Forrest often spend time together with Jenny not wanting to be home most of the time. Her mother is revealed to be dead. They are on a road when three bullies on bikes decide to chase Forrest. He is able to run much faster than them, losing his leg braces, not needing them anymore. He decided to run everywhere when he needed to go somewhere.

 

Forrest thinks that Jenny’s father was kissing and touching her and her sisters. The police took her away from her father and had her stay with her grandparents. She still came over to his house at times. Later, the same bully kids chase a now older Forrest and he can still outrun them even though they are in a car now instead of bikes. While getting away from them, he runs across a football field which gets him into college to play football. He is at the University of Alabama.

 

Governor George Wallace stood in front of the doorway to black people from going to this school. Forrest is there to see this happen. George wound up getting shot, but survived this encounter. The original lady leaves and is replaced by another one that Forrest continues to talk to.

 

He is later seen visiting Jenny in a college that was just for women only. He beats a man named Billy who he thought was hurting Jenny. Billy leaves because of this. Since they were out in the rain, she takes him to her room and takes off some of her wet clothes in front of him. He doesn’t seem ready for much else in terms of a relationship with her just yet.

 

Forrest gets to meet President John F Kennedy as an all American football player. Someone shot both Kennedy and his brother. He gets a college degree later. He is then approached by someone who thinks that he should join the army. He takes a bus ride on a scene like the one where he met Jenny. This time, it is a black man named Bubba that lets him sit next to him after other white men refused.

 

He says that he should follow what the drill sergeant says to which the sergeant says that he’s a genius. He also does something very quickly. Meanwhile, Bubba goes through all the different types of shrimp that there are. Perhaps there is shrimp glockenspiel.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUqQt8mD99c

 

Jenny was kicked out of school over appearing in Playboy. Jenny is then seen by Forrest singing naked with a guitar in front of her. Forrest, as usual, is obvious to some of what is really going on. He doesn’t like the some of the men there tried to grab her and tries to interfere. She leaves the place, somehow getting clothes back on during this time, and talks to him again. She wants to get away from him. He then reveals that he’s going to Vietnam. Also, am I the only one annoyed with how it is pronounced in this movie? Anyways, he and other people are gathered there at Vietnam with it very different in some ways from where he was.

 

It is here that they meet Lieutenant Dan Taylor. He is from a family where every member had died in one of the American wars that was going on. He mentions some of the other members there on the field in the troop with him. Bubba wants Forrest to go into the shrimping business with him. Forrest would write to Jenny during his time there. She starts spending time with hippies around this time.

 

The months long rain ends just in time for Forrest and his troops to be ambushed. He runs away, but then goes back for Bubba. He couldn’t find him, but does find other troop members. He puts them all together in one place. Dan is found and wants to be left. They use some weird sort of thing that looks like a phone that apparently existed and worked like that over a radio somehow. I wonder who I could talk to about something like that. Forrest does find Bubba and takes him out of there. This was the last time that the two of them talked. That’s all that he had to say about that.

 

He was wounded and got ice cream there. Dan rejects ice cream himself. He notices that a lot of, if not all of, the letters that he wrote to Jenny were returned. He then starts to play ping pong. Dan does not like being a crimple with his legs being gone now. He feels that Forrest robbed him of his destiny.

 

Forrest gets the Medal of Honor. He also notices that Dan was sent him. President Lyndon B Johnson gives him this medal himself. Forrest stays around in Washington D.C. He is sent around different places in the crowded area and winds up in a place where a big speech is being given near the Washington Monument. The one thing that he wants to say is caught off when someone messes with the sound system and no one can hear what he was saying. While there, Jenny shows up and they reunite.

 

Once again, Jenny is abused in some way, this time by being slapped, and Forrest beats this person in return. Things are once again okay between the two of them as they spend a lot of time together. She leaves again with the same possibly abusive lover, Wesley.

 

The moon landing happened in the background while Forrest returns to play ping pong. He is shown on a talk show with John Lennon. They reference the song Imagine while yet another person that Forrest had crossed paths with winds up shot. Dan is irritated over Forrest getting the Congressional Medal of Honor and winds up living off of the government in some ways. He’s in a wheelchair now. He seems to think that people only talk about Jesus there. He seems to reject this idea.

 

Forrest wants to be a shrimp boat captain to honor his promise to Bubba. Dan laughs at this idea. There is a New Year celebration going on. He is later seen meeting President Nixon. Nixon wants him to take a room at the Watergate hotel that was new at the time. He notices people breaking in there and reports it, not knowing the full story about it as usual. His service in the army ended next, with him going home next as a result.

 

He is back at his home for a moment. He then meets with Bubba’s family and talks to his grave. Forrest isn’t good at shrimping at first. He names the boat after Jenny. Jenny thinks about killing herself, but doesn’t go through with it.

 

Forrest sees Dan at a dock and gets off of his boat to see him. Dan wants to be his first mate which is part of his promise. I guess that even sarcastic promises have to be kept. Forrest starts going to church. The boat goes through a storm. Forrest thinks that this is when God showed up. Forrest is scared. Dan seems happy with Forrest thinking that he’s angry instead. Their boat is the only one that survived the hurricane, with them making a huge profit as a result. He’s a millionaire, which another of the changing people thinks is a lie. Dan finally thanks Forrest for saving his life.

 

A call is heard that his mother is doing poorly. She winds up dying of cancer. He gets an investment with Apple, which he thinks is a fruit company. He keeps thinking of Jenny. One day, she shows up again. She throws things at an old house there. They spend a lot of time together. He proposes to her. But she does not want to marry him. They wind up having sex before she returns to Wesley, it seems.

 

This leads Forrest to run a whole lot. He keeps running over and over again. He is somehow able to do this with much money or other things happening as well. He keeps running. People can’t quite make sense of this. People start running with him for no good reason. He also winds up giving people some ideas for things that they make a lot of money off of. He keeps running for over three years. He then just stops running and goes back home.

 

We finally learn why Forrest is there at the bus stop. He got a letter from Jenny about where to go and decided to meet up with her. He gets to her house and she apologizes in some ways over what she had done wrong. He learns that she’s a mother. She reveals that he’s the father of this child who is named after him. Jenny is sick. She proposes marriage, which he agrees to. Dan shows up to this. Dan can walk with custom made legs. They do get married. She does wind up dying later. Their child winds up doing fine. He talks more to her grave, getting emotional. He misses her. He sees his son off going to school with a random feather there flying away, ending the movie.

 

If it isn’t clear by now, I like the movie or else I probably wouldn’t have reviewed it. It was once my neighbor’s old movie until she gave it away to me along with a bunch of others. After watching it the first time, I knew that this would make a good post for this blog should I ever need one for it. This does seem to cover a lot of topics over the years and it is interesting that one person could attend a lot of them. Not all of the movie seems to make sense though. Why does he just ramble on with his story to just anyone sitting next to him not caring when people change? And I don’t like how they keep cutting off the songs they just started. But it is a good and iconic film. I recommend it.

 

Well, things have changed with my blogs again if you couldn’t tell by now by seeing this random post on a Saturday. I will be alternating this blog and another on Saturday. This should continue until you see an entire month of this blog on every Saturday the whole month until it goes back to normal. We’ll see if that happens or not. Stay tuned for more updates in one of my blogs about it. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.