“Mama says stupid is as stupid does.”
YO. GUMP. WHAT does that mean.
Dude, you gotta stop listening to your mom.
One day, some mean kids on bikes start throwing rocks at Gump because of his leg braces, so Jennay’s like, “Run, Forrest! Ruuuuuuunnn!!!” (The fact that this took off as a catchphrase means we should all be in prison.) Forrest runs so hard that his LEGS EXPLODE and his leg braces scatter all over the road, which I guess is supposed to be triumphant even though I’m pretty sure those things are expensive and it’s not like Mrs. Gump is flush with leg-brace cash (or, as she calls it, “green chocolate”).
“From that day on,” Gump says, “if I was going somewhere, I was running.”
Then miniature Forrest and Jennay shape-shift into Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, and then those same shithead kids come to throw rocks at Forrest again, only their bikes have shape-shifted into a truck!!! So Jennay’s like, “Run, Forrest, ruuuuuuuuuuun!” again, and I guess you’re supposed to be like “CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP OH HO HO A PHRASE I HAVE HEARD BEFORE! DEE-LIGHTFUL!!!”
Forrest run-Forrest-runs right through a college football game and the football coaches are like, “Gwuuuuuhhhhhh!???!!?!?!” and they hire him to play football for their college even though he is clearly forty-five years old. There’s a brief Mr. Ernst cameo, Forrest invents desegregation, and then Forrest uses punching to save Jennay from intercourse. Gump: The College Years.
Jennay takes Forrest to her dorm room for sexual gratitude and is like, “I want to be famous. I want to be a singer like Joan Baez.” And Forrest is like, “Is Joan Baez a kind of chock-lit?” And then Jennay’s like, CHECK OUT THESE CANS, and Forrest loses consciousness due to the cans (and probably control of his bladder on Jennay’s bed if we’re being honest?).
Speaking of bladders, Forrest gets to meet JFK because he’s so good at football-running, and tells the president that he is full up with urine. “Sometime later,” Gump says, “for no particular reason, somebody shot that nice young president when he was riding in his car.”
HOW DID YOU GRADUATE FROM COLLEGE? Also, could somebody answer, like, ONE of Forrest’s questions? You’re a college.
Then Gump joins the army, but on the army bus, eh-vuh-rayyee see-yuhht’s tayyy-kuhhhn UH-GEEEEE-YIN!!!!! That’s when Gump meets Bubba. Literally the only thing Bubba does is list different shrimp preparations, which Forrest interprets as “best friendship.”
One day, in the army, someone throws a dirty magazine at Forrest and goes, “Hey, Gump! Get a load of the tits on her!”
Gump gets a load.
OH NO! IT’S JENNAY! THOSE ARE JENNAY’S TITS UPON WHICH GUMP IS GETTING A LOAD!!!
Clearly, Jennay needs Forrest’s help. He finds her doing naked Joan Baez at a strip club, which is not going over that well because the patrons came to get a load of the tits on her, not listen to mediocre folk covers. So Forrest punches everyone and Jennay is, again, a real dick about it. “You can’t keep doing this, Forrest. You can’t keep trying to rescue me all the time.”
Then Forrest is like, “Say bye-bye, Jennay. They sending me to Vietnam. It’s this whole other country.” And Jennay is like, awwww, bye!
So Forrest goes to Vietnam. Right away, Gump and Bubba meet Lieutenant Dan “The Toolman” Taylor, an irascible shithead who will literally follow Gump around being awful until death. Lieutenant Dan tells Bubba not to get his lip caught on a trip wire, which is racist. Then he delivers his signature Lieutenant Dan socks lecture. LIEUTENANT DAN LOVES SOCKS. This becomes something of a tragic irony later.
The only thing Lieutenant Dan loves more than socks is getting blown up in a war. “Somebody in his family had fought and died in every single American war. I guess you could say he had a lot to live up to.” (Again, I kind of feel like Forrest’s problem isn’t that he’s stupid, it’s that literally everyone he ever meets is a fucking weirdo who makes no sense.)
One day, everybody blows up, and Forrest finds Bubba dying in the jungle.
Bubba: Forrest. I got one last thing to say.
Forrest: What is it, Bubba?
Bubba: I forgot…shrimp…ceviche.
Forrest: Bubba, please don’t die!
Bubba: Camarones…del…diablo.
Then Forrest goes, “Bubba was going to be a shrimpin’ boat captain, but instead he died right there by that river in Vietnam,” and if you claim you didn’t squeeze out at least ONE TEAR at that moment, then you’re a lying sack of shrimp! Sorry!!!
Gump gets shot in the butt while rescuing all his army friends from the exploding jungle, so he gets to go live in the hospital and eat ice cream 24-7. Turns out, Lieutenant Dan is in the bed next to him! (“FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!”—Lieutenant Dan.) Lieutenant Dan may have lost his legs, but he didn’t lose his horrible attitude! He mostly hangs around and verbally abuses Forrest for being an eternally optimistic font of pure joy.
One day, Jennay sends back all the letters Gump wrote her from Vietnam in one huge bundle. Like, Jennay, you didn’t need to SEND THEM BACK. You could have just thrown them in the garbage. You literally went to extra effort just to be a dickhead. Jennay sucks.
Gump picks up Ping-Pong while trying to kill time in the hospital, and it turns out he is a Ping-Pong wizard. Lieutenant Dan is so proud of Gump’s Pong skills that he throws him out of bed in the middle of the night to scream in his face about how much he wants to die. And it’s all Gump’s fault: “You cheated me! I had a destiny. I was supposed to die in the field, with honor.”
“This movie’s kinda weird.”—my kid.
Gump wins the Medal of Honor,
