FORREST GUMP (1994) dir. Robert Zemeckis 

Forrest Gump is the story of how one idiot can continue to luck out and have doors open in front of him despite his obvious faults…happens.

We all know one - a friend, a relative, maybe a colleague that just keeps getting a leg up despite the otherwise devastating flaw of them being a complete moron.

Forrest is one such character. In todays modern fancy medical terminology he would be called double-stupid.

The film depicts the life of this simple man, from his time in a war, the love of his life Jenny, the day he ate a box of chocolates, all the way up to when he becomes a billionaire...ridiculous.

This film won loads of Oscars - proving one thing. People love laughing at idiots.

Watch as he talks in his dumb voice, marvel as he jumps from a boat he is driving (is it driving or piloting? who knows) leaving it to crash into a jetty or whatever it's called. The guy is proper thick.

Forrest befriends an equally stupid version of himself during their time in the Vietnam war, but because his new friend 'Bubba' is black, and it's a war, and it's a movie - well I don't need to spell it out do I. 

Forrest buys a boat cause he promised Bubba he would, and then he catches some shrimp and gives his old Lieutenant from the war a job, he has no legs and is well bitter about it - fair enough.

Then they get rich cause, as previously mentioned, Forrest Gump although stupid is also proper jammy.

So as if to rub salt in his legless friends wounds Forrest runs around America for a few years - literally runs. For years. Around a country. Just cause he fancies it. Boring.

Films like this are made to win Oscars. I'm sure some film-makers are genuinely surprised when they get nominated and don't set out with awards in mind, but this film is by the numbers, connect the dots, do an Oscar, territory. 

In the end Forrest even gets the girl he's been chasing after all these years, she's been off having the time of her life, being a hippy, doing loads of drugs, having Forrest's kid and not telling him about it, getting a disease and no one ever mentions it or says what the disease is…but we know, WE know!

So Jenny gets sick and marries him, but only after she is properly going downhill and thinks ‘might as well, he’ll stay on top of my meds and that’. She dies…mug.

6/4