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Forrest Gump

Catalog Number
15395
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VHS | N/A | Slipcase
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Forrest Gump (1994)

Additional Information

Additional Information
The story of a lifetime.

The world will never be the same once you've seen it through the eyes of Forrest Gump.

Life is like a box of chocolates...you never know what you're gonna get.


"Stupid is as stupid does," says Forrest Gump (played by Tom Hanks in an Oscar-winning performance) as he discusses his relative level of intelligence with a stranger while waiting for a bus. Despite his sub-normal IQ, Gump leads a truly charmed life, with a ringside seat for many of the most memorable events of the second half of the 20th century. Entirely without trying, Forrest teaches Elvis Presley to dance, becomes a football star, meets John F. Kennedy, serves with honor in Vietnam, meets Lyndon Johnson, speaks at an anti-war rally at the Washington Monument, hangs out with the Yippies, defeats the Chinese national team in table tennis, meets Richard Nixon, discovers the break-in at the Watergate, opens a profitable shrimping business, becomes an original investor in Apple Computers, and decides to run back and forth across the country for several years. Meanwhile, as the remarkable parade of his life goes by, Forrest never forgets Jenny (Robin Wright Penn), the girl he loved as a boy, who makes her own journey through the turbulence of the 1960s and 1970s that is far more troubled than the path Forrest happens upon. Featured alongside Tom Hanks are Sally Field as Forrest's mother; Gary Sinise as his commanding officer in Vietnam; Mykelti Williamson as his ill-fated Army buddy who is familiar with every recipe that involves shrimp; and the special effects artists whose digital magic place Forrest amidst a remarkable array of historical events and people.


Forrest Gump is a 1994 American epic romantic comedy-drama film based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom. The film was directed by Robert Zemeckis and starred Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Gary Sinise and Sally Field. The story depicts several decades in the life of Forrest Gump, a naïve and slow-witted yet athletically prodigious native of Alabama who witnesses, and in some cases influences, some of the defining events of the latter half of the 20th century in the United States; more specifically, the period between Forrest's birth in 1944 and 1982.
The film differs substantially from Winston Groom's novel on which it is based, including Gump's personality and several events that were depicted. Filming took place in late 1993, mainly in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Extensive visual effects were used to incorporate the protagonist into archived footage and to develop other scenes. A comprehensive soundtrack was featured in the film, using music intended to pinpoint specific time periods portrayed on screen. Its commercial release made it a top-selling soundtrack, selling over twelve million copies worldwide.
Released in the United States on July 6, 1994, Forrest Gump received critical acclaim and became a commercial success as the top grossing film in North America released that year, being the first major success for Paramount Pictures since the studio's sale to Viacom earlier in the year. The film earned over $677 million worldwide during its theatrical run. The film won the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director for Robert Zemeckis, Best Actor for Tom Hanks, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Visual Effects and Best Film Editing. It also garnered multiple other awards and nominations, including Golden Globe Awards, People's Choice Awards and Young Artist Awards, among others. Since the film's release, varying interpretations have been made of the film's protagonist and its political symbolism. In 1996, a themed restaurant, Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, opened based on the film, and has since expanded to multiple locations worldwide. The scene of Gump running across the country is often referred to when real-life people attempt the feat.[2] In 2011, the Library of Congress selected Forrest Gump for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant


The film has received universal critical acclaim. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 71% of critics gave the film a positive review based on a sample of 63 reviews.[27] At the website Metacritic, which uses a normalized rating system, the film earned a favorable rating of 82/100 based on 19 reviews by mainstream critics.[28]
The story was commended by several critics. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "I've never met anyone like Forrest Gump in a movie before, and for that matter I've never seen a movie quite like 'Forrest Gump.' Any attempt to describe him will risk making the movie seem more conventional than it is, but let me try. It's a comedy, I guess. Or maybe a drama. Or a dream. The screenplay by Eric Roth has the complexity of modern fiction . . . The performance is a breathtaking balancing act between comedy and sadness, in a story rich in big laughs and quiet truths. . . . What a magical movie."[29] Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote that the film "...has been very well worked out on all levels, and manages the difficult feat of being an intimate, even delicate tale played with an appealingly light touch against an epic backdrop."[30] In addition, the film received notable pans from several major reviewers. Anthony Lane of The New Yorker called the film "Warm, wise, and wearisome as hell."[31] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly said that the film "...reduces the tumult of the last few decades to a virtual-reality theme park: a baby-boomer version of Disney's America."[32]
Critics had mixed views on the main character. Gump has been compared with various characters and people including Huckleberry Finn, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan.[33][34][35] Peter Chomo writes that Gump acts as a "...social mediator and as an agent of redemption in divided times".[36] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called Gump "...everything we admire in the American character – honest, brave, loyal...".[37] The New York Times reviewer Janet Maslin called Gump a "...hollow man..." who is "...self-congratulatory in his blissful ignorance, warmly embraced as the embodiment of absolutely nothing."[38] Marc Vincenti of Palo Alto Weekly called the character "...a pitiful stooge taking the pie of life in the face, thoughtfully licking his fingers."[39] Bruce Kawin and Gerald Mast's textbook on film history notes that Forrest Gump's dimness was a metaphor for glamorized nostalgia in that he represented a blank slate by which the Baby Boomer generation projected their memories of those events.[40]
The film is commonly seen as a polarizing one for audiences, with Entertainment Weekly writing in 2004, "Nearly a decade after it earned gazillions and swept the Oscars, Robert Zemeckis's ode to 20th-century America still represents one of cinema's most clearly drawn lines in the sand. One half of folks see it as an artificial piece of pop melodrama, while everyone else raves that it's sweet as a box of chocolates

Produced on a budget of $55 million, Forrest Gump opened in 1,595 theaters in its first weekend of domestic release, earning $24,450,602.[1] Motion picture business consultant and screenwriter Jeffrey Hilton suggested to producer Wendy Finerman to double the P&A (film marketing budget) based on his viewing of an early print of the film. The budget was immediately increased, per his advice. The film placed first in the weekend's box office, narrowly beating The Lion King, which was in its fourth week of release.[1] For the first ten weeks of its release, the film held the number one position at the box office.[42] The film remained in theaters for 42 weeks, earning $329.7 million in the United States and Canada, making it the fourth-highest grossing film at that time (behind only E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Star Wars IV: A New Hope, and Jurassic Park).[42][43]
The film took 66 days to surpass $250 million and was the fastest grossing Paramount film to pass $100 million, $200 million, and $300 million in box office receipts (at the time of its release).[44][45][46] The film had gross receipts of $329,694,499 in the U.S. and Canada and $347,693,217 in international markets for a total of $677,387,716 worldwide.[1] Even with such revenue, the film was known as a "successful failure"—due to distributors' and exhibitors' high fees, Paramount's "losses" clocked in at $62 million, leaving executives realizing the necessity of better deals.[47] This has however also been associated with Hollywood accounting, where expenses are inflated in order to minimize profit sharing.


Forrest Gump was first released on VHS tape on April 27, 1995, as a two-disc Laserdisc set on April 28, 1995, (including the "Through the Eyes of Forrest" special feature), before being released in a two-disc DVD set on August 28, 2001. Special features included director and producer commentaries, production featurettes, and screen tests.[48] The film was released on Blu-ray disc in November 2009.

Release Date: July 6, 1994

Distrib: Paramount

Boxoffice: $329,694,499 2013: $640,932,200
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