He won his *only* two Oscars for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, and while he didn’t get nominated for Apollo 13, many Oscar nominations have followed. And while all three movies were fantastic, this review is about Hanks’ crown jewel in his storied career. This was a role meant for him. This role would have imploded into pieces of a less skilled actor. It’s a role that will forever link Hanks, the actor, with Gump, the character, and vice versa. It is the fabulous Forrest Gump.

Before I get into the review of this film and talk about all of the good that it brought onto the screen, I’d be remiss if I waited until later in this review to bring up a significant miss by the Academy. 13 Oscar nominations and six, deserving, wins, but where is Robin Wright (The Princess Bride, Moll Flanders)? You can debate the genre into which Forrest Gump falls. Is it comedy, drama, fantasy, a dream, or a combination of some of these different parts? Most would agree it’s a combination of these other parts. But let’s drop it down a notch for a second and get at its core first. At its core, Forrest Gump is one of the greatest love stories ever told.

Without Jenny (Wright), there is no Forrest. Without Wright, there is no Best Actor Academy Award for Hanks. Sometimes, I’ll fight for snubs harder than others, but what are we doing here? In 1994, Dianne Wiest and Jennifer Tilly received Best Supporting Actress nominations for Bullets Over Broadway. We had Uma Thurman for Pulp Fiction (rightfully deserved). We also had Helen Mirren and Rosemary Harris nominated for two movies I had never heard of. Where was Wright? Her performance as the in-again, out-again love interest in Forrest’s life not only solidified him as the hardworking, honest, honorable, patriotic hero he was. The glimpses in her performance, when the two met in elementary school until her (sorry, spoilers here) untimely death when they had a son of their own at the same age, gave Hanks’ Gump purpose. Everything he did with Jenny was constantly at the forefront of his mind. Without Jenny, we have no movie. And without the right Jenny, we don’t have a film regarded as one of the Top 100 movies ever made. Her omission is one of the biggest gaffs in the history of the Academy Awards. While each scene resonated uniquely, and there were plenty of other colorful characters, our love was with Jenny. We were rooting for the two of them to make it work in a way that we don’t always care about our characters in most movies we watch. I’ll return to Jenny again in this review, but really? Despite her terrific career, Penn has yet to earn a nomination for an Oscar. This was the opportunity to do so, and the Academy just flat-out blew it.

As mentioned, this is a fictionalized story that puts this man with an extremely low IQ at the center of so many events in our country’s history between the late ’50s and early ’80s. His mother owns an Alabama boardinghouse (Sally Field – Norma Rae, Places of the Heart). Like Jenny, Forrest will do anything for his mother, and just like Jenny, he’ll do anything that either woman asks of him. Their words of wisdom help him escape casual, sticky situations and even some of the most severe. What’s cool about Forrest is that he is incapable of doing anything less than profound, even with his limited IQ. To know him is to love him, and he has plenty of people in his life who love him and will fight for him at all costs.

While Jenny is off discovering the world of hard drugs, protesting against the war, or trying to make enough cash without having societal job constraints, Forrest is getting a college education at the University of Alabama through a football scholarship (he has unreal speed), earning a Medal of Honor in The Vietnam War, winning international ping pong championships, captaining the Bubba Shrimp Company shrimping boats, running multiple laps across the United States of America, and more.

Yes, it’s a little far-fetched, and in a lesser director than Robert Zemeckis (Flight, Back to the Future), this could have bombed. Badly. But Zemeckis went with the fantasy aspect of things and let his imagination do the rest. He picked an incredible score and soundtrack of songs that went perfectly with the actual events depicted in the movie. On top of that, he assembled what looked like real-life footage with many of the fictitious scenes. It worked. It also worked exceptionally well because of Hanks’ portrayal of Gump. Nothing was ever too big for this team, and nothing was ever overplayed. This is true even in the film’s most intense and meaningful moments, like Forrest saving Lieutenant Dan’s (Gary Sinise – Of Mice and Men, Apollo 13) life or Forrest reconnecting with Jenny on the Washington DC Reflecting Pool, exposing the Watergate Scandal, etc. These events never got bigger than the character, and, through Forrest’s innocence, the character never got bigger than the event.

While Mrs. Gump, Lieutenant Dan, Bubba Gump (Mykelti Williamson – Fences, August Rush), and Forrest Junior (Haley Joel Osment – The Sixth Sense, Pay it Forward) were all outstanding in their roles, this movie belonged to Forrest and Jenny. The film runs at 142 minutes, and I would bet that Forrest and Jenny share the screen for less than 25. However, they are in so many scenes together that it feels like she leaves him just to reunite them. But it’s not like she returns to Forrest when she needs him. Quite the contrary. Jenny doesn’t want Forrest’s money, and we painstakingly watch him pour out his heart to Jenny just so that Jenny will not be ready to be with someone like him. But we don’t hate Jenny for it. She’s a highly likable character we find ourselves rooting for the entire time.

We are rooting for all of these characters. Outside of some bullies who don’t have a big enough part in this movie to matter, we are filled with protagonists who long to make Forrest’s life better. All mentioned at the start of this paragraph were integral in the storytelling and perfectly cast. They serve as much more than background noise for our two leads. They fit perfectly and support Forrest and, when possible, Jenny. Everyone is rooting for these two to get together. And when they finally do, it’s both beautiful and tragic. Indeed, Forrest can’t experience every emotion like most of us can. Many things are super easy for us to comprehend, and he will never understand them. But as he so effortlessly states and engrains in our brains, he does know what love is. The Forrest and Jenny story is the most moving in cinema in a 1994 movie, if not the entire decade. If you disagree, I challenge you to watch the film again and focus on the Forrest and Jenny portions. I challenge you not to weep just a little when, upon meeting Forrest Jr., Forrest asks Jenny if he’s smart, and Jenny says that he’s one of the smartest kids in the class. Or to watch this man’s reaction when Jenny tells Forrest for the first time that he’s the father. It’ll knock you out of your shoes if you are fully engrossed in the movie.

Forrest Gump is one of the treasures in American cinema. It is a perfect movie that, if you allow it, will leave you spellbound, gasping for air, and cheering for this masterpiece all within the same two and a half hours. It’s a movie that should be seen every few years, and I recommend you add it to your video collection.

Plot 10/10
Character Development 10/10
Character Chemistry 10/10
Acting 10/10
Screenplay 10/10
Directing 10/10
Cinematography 10/10
Sound 10/10
Hook and Reel 10/10
Universal Relevance 10/10
100%

A+

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