Forrest Gump is a totally endearing character. You can't NOT root for him! And it's a heartwarming story. The fact that a drunken crowd of jaded Seattle hipsters voted it not guilty -- even by a narrow margin -- makes my heart happy.

Also Ken Jennings is Mormon.

That is all.

I couldn't have voted guilty if the standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt," but if the standard is "on the balance of probabilities" I would have.

YES! Forrest Gump is a dreadful film, sexist and racist and pandering to the basest instincts. The grody treatment of Jenny alone had me walk out of the theater 3/4 of the way through the movie. I've since been forced to sit through it (more than once), and I still say it stinks stinks stinks!

Jenny would have voted guilty. I vote guilty.

I am now a fan of Ken Jennings, and thank you, Paul for fighting the good fight. But the verdict can't be considered unexpected when you have the Zimmerman jury.

the assassinations of Malcolm Luther King and Malcolm X are never mentioned.

I've got nothing nice to say about the film, but I thought I remembered that the murder of King is referred to?

apparently, there was also a scene with a civil rights march that didn't make the cut, and can be seen on the DVD. It sounds dreadful, really quite offensive stuff.

I thought the movie was cheap and lazy. However, when weighed against the even cheaper and lazier critique of @4, it's a fucking masterpiece.

Not guilty!

I would have voted guilty too. I remember in my Comp 1 class, we had to do a review of one of the films that won the Best Picture Oscar in the last fifteen years. I chose "Forrest Gump" and laid into it. Despite my paper being perfectly written with coherent arguments and no grammatical or spelling errors, I was given a C-. Why? Because that was the professor's favorite movie of all time, and she couldn't stand reading a critique of it.

The moral of Forrest Gump: Follow all the rules and you get rich. Break them and you get AIDS.

@10: Yeah, I'm sure that's why you got a C-. My guess after reading your self-satisfied comment, you picked a target you thought would be easy pickings and wrote a lazy, shallow critique.

Any movie that presents such a horrible exploitation of intellectual disability should never have been shown.

Well, you know they say about stupid: it's like a box of chocolates.

I've still never seen Forrest Gump. It was one of those movies where the previews bored me and none of the critical reaction prompted me to change my mind -- it was highly praised, but in a spirit that I felt I recognized from other movies I ended up not liking in spite of their critical acclaim.

Over the years, morbid curiosity has prompted me to consider sitting through it on a number of occasions. But I still haven't.

@11 exactly. I hate the Wizard of Oz for similar thematic reasons (stay home, little girl!) but at least that was a bona-fide masterpiece of craft.

Forrest Gump is appalling, the worst Best Picture winner in my lifetime. Worse than Driving Miss Daisy, worse than Braveheart, worse than American Beauty. It's the worst because its toxic heart is enrobed in cheap sentiment like the dollar-store cordials the man doles out from the bench.

I have nothing but contempt for the film, and deep suspicion of anyone who loves it.

This is why we can't have nice things.

I used to work for Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. For chain fare, the food isn't bad. But management made you do things like study the movie and answer movie-related questions for hires and promotions. And many of the restaurants' clientele would be right at home at a Ted Nugent concert. Let's just say I fucking hate this movie and hope to never see it ever again.

Malcolm Luther King?

A commenter re-mentioned it above and didn't notice the error either!

Guess we're getting that country we deserve.

@2: Ungh, you like terrible movies. And Jennings is a wonderful person, completely unlike LDS elders. Have you read any of his books or heard him speak, or are you just spouting "he's a Mormon" out to slight him?

Gump's enduring legacy is going to be idiots people yelling "RUN FORREST RUN" at joggers for decades to come.

Ken Jennings is a weird Mormon. I like him.

@12 My aunt is a professor. I sent the critique to her before I turned it in, and it was perfect. Every other paper I wrote got an A. The people in my group who were barely literate who wrote positive papers on FG got a better grade than me. You do the math.

What do bears do in the woods? They take a Forrest Gump. The film is a pile of poo.

Forrest Gump is not only bad, it's quite dangerous. Much like the person who interrupts every thread discussion to say "Meh" or "Lol wut", Forrest Gump is the answer of every middlebrow and below who can't follow an argument and hence feels justified to play Alexander slicing a Gordian knot and saying "let's be stupid".

I was a watching a Son of Gump movie last night "The United States of Leland". Here too, the innocent, wide eyed, Gumpian-Caulfield character(s) spend their days pointing out the foibles and inconsistencies of the adult world, and justify their reluctance or inability to enter it. US of L takes it to the logical conclusion of following only one's intuition and the result is a chain of murders.

Innocence amidst a sea of corruption is endearing and sweet, but I wouldn't want to run my country, or my police force, using it as a barometer. Too many wide eyed innocents running around will eventually start to point out Emperors whose clothes are very opaque. The problem is they will then kill those Emperors because they are just too hard for them to understand.

A much better movie is "being there" with Peter Sellars

@20 -- My favourite movies of 2013 were probably Her, Before Midnight, and Stories We Tell. Did you think those were terrible?

And yeah, I listened to an hour long interview with Jennings on Stern -- that's how I found out he's Mormon. He seems nice enough, and is obviously gifted when it comes to trivia, but none of that changes my thoughts on the Mormon church, which I continue to view as completely fucking insane.

"the assassinations of Malcolm Luther King and Malcolm X are never mentioned". It is allways best to proofread. I tend to agree that Forrest Gump should have been found guilty. *spelling mistake intentional*

@2, I don't know if Jennings is observant or not, but in any case he's way cool. I have a couple of his books and they're hilarious.

I love Tom Hanks and could pretty much watch him in any movie -- including one where he talks to a soccer ball. Not sure how Forrest Gump comes close to being a "criminally bad movie". Would give that honor to Gone With the Wind, which is pro-slavery and made the African American actors seem docile and stupid.

I come with the magical tidings that, in Britain, Forrest Gump is considered a satire of American culture and values. The British are a cruel people, and I salute them.