Forrest Gump: Critic Reviews

Reduces the tumult of the last few decades to a virtual-reality theme park: a baby-boomer version of Disney's America.

Forrest Gump has the elements of an emotionally gripping story. Yet it feels less like a romance than like a coffee-table book celebrating the magic of special effects.

All this might have seemed like pressing optimism a bit without the bland but still potent presence of Tom Hanks at its centre, clearly on his way to another Oscar nomination.

Skillfully adapted by screenwriter Eric Roth, the story belongs in the company of such sweet classics as Rain Man and Harvey.

Hanks is superb, reemploying the childlike presence he brought to Big.

Warm, wise, and wearisome as hell.

What a magical movie.

Credit for the success of the film has to start with director Robert Zemeckis, who has taken his Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit success and parlayed it into a more mature, yet equally entertaining, film.

This tall tale may reach monumental proportions, but Forrest Gump always keeps its magical airiness and grace.

Judging by the the movie's enduring popularity, the message that stupidity is redemption is clearly what a lot of Americans want to hear.

A picaresque story of a simpleton's charmed odyssey through 30 years of tumultuous American history, Forrest Gump is whimsy with a strong cultural spine.

This is one summer movie that doesn't evaporate the minute you leave the theater.

Passionate and magical, Forrest Gump is a tonic for the weary of spirit.

Like the best movie actors, Hanks is a superb reactor.

A movie heart-breaker of oddball wit and startling grace.

Largely enjoyable.

One can sneer at it, but one can't ignore it.

The greatest pleasure the picture affords Americans is most likely a sense of relief; Forrest Gump assures us that we've awakened from the nightmare of history; that all is forgiven, and most has already been forgotten.

...not a wishful paean to a fantasy version of America, but a portrait of America - its awfulness and beauty, promise and pain - as seen through the eyes of an innocent.

This Oscar-winner divided critics in its chronicle of the long journey taken by a slow-witted boy through American history and politics, but there was consensus about the high-caliber acting of Hanks, who won a second, consecutive Best Actor Oscar.

Moving and wonderful, but parent preview a good idea.

Even if its success was overblown, so was the backlash.

Forrest may be dumb, but he ain't stupid.

Forrest may be dumb, but he ain't stupid.

For all its ambition, the movie ends up using great historical events in the service of a dubious sentimentality.