I'm going to be revealing a bit of my bias in my "Forrest Gump" review because I have such a different opinion from the general populace. Why in the world does everyone like this movie so stinking much? Even people who I consider to otherwise have good taste in movies love this flick while I just don’t get it. Maybe it just didn’t click with me somehow; it was a struggle for me to even get to the end. When it was over the only thing I could think of was, “I’ll never get those 2 hours of my life back.” The only half-decent thing to come out of the movie was a Weird Al parody song+video.

I wrote my review well after the fact (I saw it before I started writing these), and can’t make myself sit through it again so I may not remember everything I disliked about it or other details that I normally try to cover. To help with that I started reading other reviews to refresh my memory. I read one after another supposedly good reviews that gave the movie the highest marks, yet only one made me question my severely negative view – one written by the parent of an autistic child who was encouraged by the movie. OK, so I can see how an autistic person could relate to and be encouraged by the movie (though I have Asperger's Syndrome myself and it doesn't affect my enjoyment), and I apologize to them in advance for my distaste of it; however, I will not change my opinion for the sake of not being different rather than being honest.

Much of my dislike comes from simple boredom. I could not get interested in anything that was going on, didn’t feel empathetic towards the characters, and thought they tried too hard to generate too many catch phrases. What was going on: I guess we’re on a journey through Gump’s life. It’s a series of unlikely events like accidentally unveiling a Presidential scandal, stumbling across a Black Panther meeting, getting discovered for extraordinary football and ping-pong playing talents, meeting Presidents, becoming a millionaire because of a dead friend’s idea, having a baby with a Playboy bunny, etc.

It all feels too jumpy to me with the focus shifting constantly. I’m surprised he didn’t accidentally figure out space travel, hang out at Hugh Hefner’s mansion, and provide the basis for Stan Lee’s superheroes. I guess a lot of people thought the story flowed and was entertaining, but I thought it was a way to work in as many recognizable events as possible to make the movie more marketable.

The characters: Forrest is OK. I won’t argue against Tom Hanks doing a good acting job there, but I can’t think of another actor/character that I thought was particularly good (again, keep in mind that I was bored during the scenes and not watching with a critical eye). Gary Sinese – he does an acceptable job, I guess, but I didn’t think he brought anything memorable to the role. Sally Field – I’ve never seen a movie I like Sally Field in. Robin whatshername – I couldn’t get past the poor character whether it was the writing or her performance. I mean seriously, is she going to get up on stage butt naked, sing folk songs, and expect a bunch of alcohol-infused guys to give a rolling donut about the message in her music? Maybe someone could be so misguided that she could think being nude would get a crowd of horny, straight males’ attention enough to listen to what she has to say, but to make it the action of a believable character takes more character development, scene set-up and/or follow-up than this movie had. I saw it as nothing more than an excuse to show Robin’s bare butt on screen for a second or two. Adding not only to the disjointed flow of the story, but also to my irritation at the pushing of the rating which I will look at more closely in a bit.

Catch phrases: Stupid is as stupid does. It sounds like pointless cinema dribble to me. Add to that the other phrases that permeate the movie, and the result is my getting annoyed with them.