Then Gump accidentally wanders into an anti-war rally on the Mall in Washington, and Jennay is at the protest OF COURSE and she’s like, “Forrest! Forrest!” and he’s like, “Jennay!” and they run out into that stank duck pond and hug. Then Jennay takes Gump to a Black Panther meeting, where her boyfriend Wesley (DIFFERENT WESLEY) slaps her in the face for no reason, so Gump is like GUUUUUUMP ATTAAAACK and punches him. Wesley explains that it’s actually Lyndon Johnson’s fault that he is violent toward women, so Jennay forgives him and goes off with him in a bus.
Forrest becomes an incredibly famous international Ping-Pong star (yes, a thing, I’m sure) and goes on Dick Cavett, where he meets John Lennon.
Gump: In the land of China, people hardly got nothing at all.
Lennon: No possessions?
Gump: And in China, they never go to church.
Lennon: No religion too?
Cavett: Wow, hard to imagine.
Lennon: Well, it’s easy if you try, Dick.
This is the most terrible scene ever to appear in any film.
Gump reunites with Lieutenant Dan and vows to use his Ping-Pong endorsement money to fulfill Bubba’s dream of being a shrimp boat captain. Lieutenant Dan, for some reason, is EXTREMELY SKEPTICAL that this dude who’s already met three presidents, won a Congressional Medal of Honor, wrote John Lennon’s “Imagine,” blew the whistle on Watergate, and made tens of thousands of dollars PLAYING PING-PONG could possibly achieve the famously insurmountable dream of buying a medium-size boat in Alabama and riding around on it looking for shrimp. “If you’re ever a shrimp boat captain, that’s the day I’m an astronaut.”
DUDE. HE IS THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MAN IN THE WORLD.
Meanwhile, Jennay is off somewhere having a shitty vibe because of the ’70s.
So, Gump moves back to Alabama to do the shrimp-boat thing, but it turns out that catching shrimp is his only weakness. He fucking sucks at it. He mostly catches garbage. But then, one day, there’s Lieutenant Dan sitting on the dock! He wants to join the shrimpin’ crew! Gump gets so excited that he jumps from the helm into the water, allowing the boat to run rogue and destroy the entire marina. This is never spoken of again.
Lieutenant Dan doesn’t turn out to be much help with catching shrimp, so Gump starts going to church every Sunday while Lieutenant Dan sits in the back glaring at people and drinking whiskey. Then, one day, Gump’s prayers are answered! An ENORMOUS HURRICANE comes and destroys the entire Louisiana shrimping industry!!!!! EXCEPT FOR THEIR BOAT!
YAY! YAY! YAY FOR IMPOVERISHED BLACK PEOPLE WHOSE HOMES, LIVELIHOODS, AND FUTURES HAVE BEEN OBLITERATED BECAUSE NOW THESE TWO RANDOM WHITE DUDES WHO ARE LITERALLY JUST DOING THIS AS A HOBBY CAN BECOME FUCKING MILLIONAIRES! YAAAAAAAYYYYY!!!
Then Lieutenant Dan finally becomes nice and thanks Forrest for saving him from blowing up to death in Vietnam. Then Forrest gets a call that his mom is dying, so he swims home. Then she dies. Then Lieutenant Dan invests the Bubba Gump Shrimp money in Apple Computers, so Forrest is able to buy his church a funky new bass player and Bubba’s mom gets a white slave. Then Jennay comes home to visit, buys him new shoes, does sex with him, and then leaves again. So Forrest runs back and forth across the country a few times.
And then we’re caught up!!! We’re back on the bus bench! Forrest is like, “Yep, I got this letter that I should come visit Jennay, so I’m on my way to her apartment,” and the people on the bench are like, “FUCKING FINALLY, MY FAMILY THINKS I’M DEAD,” and then some old lady gives him directions and it’s denouement o’clock.
He shows up at Jennay’s house and she introduces him to her new kid.
Jennay: His name’s Forrest.
Forrest: Like me!
Jennay: I named him after his daddy.
Forrest: He got a daddy named Forrest too?
Jennay: You’re his daddy, Forrest.
Not the coolest way to deliver that news, but I get it. You’re Jennay.
They get married and she wears the worst wedding dress I’ve ever seen and she tells Forrest she has HIV. But they don’t say HIV. They just say “a virus.”
And then they have this Meaningful Conversation about life’s majesty:
Forrest: And then, in the desert, when the sun comes up, I couldn’t tell where heaven stopped and the earth began. It was so beautiful.
Jennay: I wish I could have been there with you.
Forrest: You were. [But you were really high and you don’t remember.]
Then Jennay dies and turns into a feather and THE WHOLE MOVIE STARTS OVER AGAIN FROM THE BEGINNING.
RATING: 5/10 DVDs of The Fugitive.
Footnotes
1 Butts are genitals! Change my mind!!!
Literally a Bird’s Diary
We open at some kind of fancy old folks’ convalescence palace. “Simple guy” James Garner shows up to read out loud to senile silver fox Gena Rowlands, but Gena Rowlands’s nurse is like, “She’s really not into it today. Thanks anyway.” Kicking off a trend of men-Red-Rovering-through-women’s-boundaries-like-Ram-Man-but-horny that will come to define the entire film, James Garner is like, “SUCKS 2 SUCK,” and barges in there anyway. He begins reading some of his Ryan Gosling fanfic out of a notebook (that’s a reference), and it goes a little something like this:
It’s June 6, 1940, in Seabrook Island, South Carolina, and Ryan Gosling is at a carnival. Suddenly, he spots a sexy babe on the bumper cars and his nostrils flare so wide you can see his brain.
She’s perfect! She’s so beautiful! She’s said, like, four syllables so far and none of them have been just a faucet of hot drool! She probably has other qualities that are also valuable in a woman and I will get back to you ASAP as soon as I think of any! He has got to have her. (Literally. He literally says, “When I see something that I like, I gotta have it.”) Unfortunately, the lady—Rachel McAdams—turns out to be a human being,
