FORREST GUMP

SUMMARY
Forrest Gump is the tale of a young boy, who, even though he has much mental
and physical incapabilitys succeeds in life. It begins with him sitting at a bus stop
and a feather floating down and Forrest putting the feather into his favourite
book. A woman sits down at the bench and he begins to go into the story of his
life, beginning with, Momma always said life was like a box of chocolates, youll
never know what youll get.
The story then goes back in time to when Forrest was younger, in a doctors
office with him getting leg braces. He called them his magic shoes. Forrest and
his mom lived in a big house all to themselves and she would let the extra rooms
out to people traveling through town.

As a child Forrest was considered special and he was supposed to go to a

special school but his mom insisted he go to a regular school even with his IQ
being 75. Forrests dad left before he was born and his mom said that he went on
a vacation, and that a vacation is where you leave somewhere and dont come
back.

Forrest meets Jenny when he starts school and this is a key point in the movie
when they become friends. She is the first person to actually talk to him besides

his own mother. She teaches him how to read and he teaches her how to swing,
she was his only friend.

When Forrest and Jenny are walking home together, some little boys throw rocks
at Forrest and he begins to run after Jenny tells him so. As he is running his leg
braces fall off and that is when he grows to love running, running whenever he
can. This is a turning point and his ability to run at lightening speed gets him into
college on a football scholarship.

While attending the University of Alabama a controversy arises where the

governor, George Wallace refuses to admit two black students; Jimmy Hood and
Vivian Malone. But President Kennedy orders military help and the two are
signed up for summer classes. Later George Wallace runs for President and he
is shot, but does not die.

Forrest is put on the All-American football team and he meets President

Kennedy, which is historically untrue. Awhile after meeting President Kennedy, he
is assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald and a short time after that President
Kennedys brother is also killed.

But after five years of playing football at the University of Alabama, Forrest gets
his college degree and he is invited to join the army and he does. While in the
army Forrest meets Bubba, who is a black man from the south and they become

good friends, they are both sent to fight in Vietnam. There they meet Lieutenant
Danforth, a short white man and they are in the 14th platoon. While in Vietnam,
Forrest got to see a lot of the countryside, they were always on the go.

While in a battle, Forrest runs as fast as he could to get away, and once he was
by himself he realised that he had left Bubba, so he runs back to try and find him.
And every time he went back he found someone else that he had to carry to
safety. And he found Lieutenant Dan, who wanted to be left there so he could die
with his platoon but Forrest took him to safety. And on the last trip before the
aircrafts were to bomb the area Forrest finds Bubba and just in time he gets
Bubba to safety. Unfortunately, Bubba was shot and he dies next to the river in
Vietnam, before he dies, he says that he wanted to go home.

During that battle Forrest got shot in the butt-tox and he is on leave from the
war and Dan is on leave because he lost his legs. Forrest begins to play pingpong; he was so addicted he played in his sleep. Forrest gets the congressional
metal of honour, for his bravery. Then Lieutenant Dan is sent home and then
Forrest is also sent home.

Forrest meets President Lyndon B. Johnson and he goes to a peace rally where
he is reunited with Jenny. And when he is with Jenny they go to a black panther
meeting because Jenny is a hippy. But Jenny leaves to California and Forrest
gives her his metal of honour because, I only got it because I did what you

said.

Because Forrest is so good at ping-pong he is invited to join the All-American

team, and he meets John Lennon and President Nixon because of it. While
meeting President Nixon, Forrest stays at the Watergate hotel and shortly after
that Nixon resigns.

Forrest is discharged from the army and he goes home and finds out that he has
received a 25,000 dollar endorsement check. He uses the check to get a
shrimping boat and he to visit Bubbas mom. He names the boat Jenny and Dan
joins Forrest crew, a short while after there is a hurricane and the whole
shrimping community is destroyed except for the Jenny. After that they began to
get a lot of shrimp.

President Ford escapes possible assassination after he is shot, while in New

York. Forrest doesnt go back to shrimping again he instead mows football fields
and, he never had to worry about money again. Since Dan invested in the Apple
company. And even though Bubba was dead he gave some of the money he
earned to Bubba.

REVIEW
I've never met anyone like Forrest Gump in a movie before, and for that matter
I've never seen a movie quite like "Forrest Gump." Any attempt to describe him
will risk making the movie seem more conventional than it is, but let me try. It's a
comedy, I guess. Or maybe a drama. Or a dream.
The screenplay by Eric Roth has the complexity of modern fiction, not the
formulas of modern movies. Its hero, played by Tom Hanks, is a thoroughly
decent man with an IQ of 75, who manages between the 1950s and the 1980s to
become involved in every major event in American history. And he survives them
all with only honesty and niceness as his shields.
And yet this is not a heartwarming story about a mentally retarded man. That
cubbyhole is much too small and limiting for Forrest Gump. The movie is more of
a meditation on our times, as seen through the eyes of a man who lacks cynicism
and takes things for exactly what they are. Watch him carefully and you will
understand why some people are criticized for being "too clever by half." Forrest
is clever by just exactly enough.
Tom Hanks may be the only actor who could have played the role.
I can't think of anyone else as Gump, after seeing how Hanks makes him into a
person so dignified, so straight-ahead. The performance is a breathtaking

balancing act between comedy and sadness, in a story rich in big laughs and
quiet truths.
Forrest is born to an Alabama boardinghouse owner (Sally Field) who tries to
correct his posture by making him wear braces, but who never criticizes his mind.
When Forrest is called "stupid," his mother tells him, "Stupid is as stupid does,"
and Forrest turns out to be incapable of doing anything less than profound. Also,
when the braces finally fall from his legs, it turns out he can run like the wind.
That's how he gets a college football scholarship, in a life story that eventually
becomes a running gag about his good luck. Gump the football hero becomes
Gump the Medal of Honor winner in Vietnam, and then Gump the Ping-Pong
champion, Gump the shrimp boat captain, Gump the millionaire stockholder (he
gets shares in a new "fruit company" named Apple Computer), and Gump the
man who runs across America and then retraces his steps.
It could be argued that with his IQ of 75 Forrest does not quite understand
everything that happens to him. Not so. He understands everything he needs to
know, and the rest, the movie suggests, is just surplus. He even understands
everything that's important about love, although Jenny, the girl he falls in love
with in grade school and never falls out of love with, tells him, "Forrest, you don't
know what love is." She is a stripper by that time.
The movie is ingenious in taking Forrest on his tour of recent American history.
The director, Robert Zemeckis, is experienced with the magic that special effects

can do (his credits include the "Back To The Future" movies and "Who Framed
Roger Rabbit"), and here he uses computerized visual legerdemain to place
Gump in historic situations with actual people.
Forrest stands next to the schoolhouse door with George Wallace, he teaches
Elvis how to swivel his hips, he visits the White House three times, he's on
the Dick Cavett show with John Lennon, and in a sequence that will have you
rubbing your eyes with its realism, he addresses a Vietnam-era peace rally on
the Mall in Washington. Special effects are also used in creating the character of
Forrest's Vietnam friend Lt. Dan (Gary Sinise), aRon Kovic type who quite
convincingly loses his legs.
Using carefully selected TV clips and dubbed voices, Zemeckis is able to create
some hilarious moments, as when LBJ examines the wound in what Forrest
describes as "my butt-ox." And the biggest laugh in the movie comes after Nixon
inquires where Forrest is staying in Washington, and then recommends the
Watergate. (That's not the laugh, just the setup.) As Forrest's life becomes a
guided tour of straight-arrow America, Jenny (played by Robin Wright) goes on a
parallel tour of the counterculture. She goes to California, of course, and drops
out, tunes in, and turns on. She's into psychedelics and flower power, antiwar
rallies and love-ins, drugs and needles. Eventually it becomes clear that between
them Forrest and Jenny have covered all of the landmarks of our recent cultural
history, and the accommodation they arrive at in the end is like a dream of
reconciliation for our society.

PSYCHOLOGY 101
A Movie Review
Of
Forrest Gump

Submitted to: Ms. Tiongson

Submitted by: Seth Vismarck C. Escaler
BSME-1B