Guest blogger: Dan 2

The movie Forrest Gump is about the life of a guy named Forrest Gump, that’s the best way to explain it. It starts off with Forrest as a young boy from Alabama in the early 1950’s. He has one friend and her name is Jenny who he met on the bus on the first day of school. After his braces break off after being chased by kids on bikes we notice that Forrest is really fast. Football coaches saw this speed too and he ended up getting a scholarship to the University of Alabama. After he graduates he enlists in the army and he goes to Vietnam. In Vietnam he meets Bubba, who gets him agree to get into the shrimp business with him after the war (Bubba dies in Vietnam). He also meets Lt. Dan, who Forrest saves at the end of the Vietnam scene. After Vietnam Forrest represents the USA in ping-pong and gets multiple endorsements and sponsors because of his skill. With money he gets from these endorsements he buys a shrimping boat and gets Lt. Dan to be his first mate. After a hurricane, Forrest’s boat is the only one left and he has a huge season. He starts Bubba-Gump Shrimp a million dollar company and buys a whole fleet of boats. At the end of the movie, Forrest finds Jenny and that’s as far as I want to go. Tom Hanks played Forrest Gump and he was amazing, probably the best acting I’ve seen in a movie ever. I don’t know how he could talk in the voice he had to use the whole movie. His character Forrest is not very smart, but he cares a lot about other people. Examples of him caring about others are he goes back into the jungle in Vietnam to save Lt. Dan before the airstrike, and he beats up guys that treat Jenny wrong. Robin Wright played Jenny and also did a very good job in the movie. Jenny is a nice girl who loses her drive for a while and stars using drugs and gets a virus. But at the end Forrest marries Jenny and she gets back to her normal self. Gary Sinise was Lt. Dan and he was brilliant as he was Forrest’s grouchy commanding officer, who only really cared about himself. Lt. Dan really didn’t appreciate his life with two legs missing, until Forrest came and met him in New York after the war to make him his first mate. Themes of Forrest Gump are, “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get”, and never give up on life no matter how big the obstacles. I agree with critic Roger Ebert on this movie. He said, “The performance is a breathtaking balancing act between comedy and sadness, in a story rich in big laughs and quiet truths”. That quote captured the movie brilliantly right there. Overall Forrest Gump is definitely worth the time to watch and the money to buy it. It could be one of the best character driven movies ever made.