Life Is Like a Box of Chocolates…

Back when I first got a DVD player, there were two movies on my shopping list my next trip to Best Buy, the movie that spawned the title of this blog, Happy Gilmore and the other being Forrest Gump which is this month’s induction into the Scooter Hall of Fame. Being a huge history buff, the latter movie was right up my alley as the title character traveled through the decades and somehow taking parts in some of the biggest events and meeting everyone from Beatles to presidents. All along the journey we were all captivated by Tom Hanks portal of the simple man.

Even though Hanks could have carried the movie all by himself, it’s the surrounding characters that made the movie more memorable most of which were introduced to us during Forest’s tour of duty in Vietnam. The equally simple minded Bubba became the yin to Gump’s yang and gives the most interesting monologue on shrimp ever. Then there’s Lieutenant Dan who continues to bump into Gump throughout the movie whether he likes it or not. Of course this was also the breakout role Gary Sinise as he totally hit his mark as Gump’s legless wingman for the later half of the movie.

But with all the passing buddies, the movie is still a love story at heart with Forrest and Jenny. Robin Wright (now Penn) brilliantly plays Jenny switching between the girl next door and the girl next door that ends up in Playboy. And some of the best lines come from the two interesting; who at some point of their life said some variation of “Run Forrest run” or “I think I ruined your roommate’s towel”? Another big part of the movie was the soundtrack. At the time the movie came out, I still hadn’t dove that deep into musical history yet, so the movie helped me discover new tunes. Like at the time, I thought Lynyrd Skynyrd only had one song, but I now realize they only have two, granted the second one being a song they like to play in concert for forty-five minutes.

The movie even inspired me to pick up the Winston Groom book it was based on. There were plenty of discrepancies between the two including Forrest being 300-pound plus in the book and Jenny makes it through it too (although she does bite the dust early in the sequel Gump & Co.). And there many more adventures that didn’t make the movie either, not that we will see a movie sequel anytime soon as Groom thought he was short-changed from the profits of the movie. He even starts off the book’s sequel by having have Gump warn people never let anyone make a movie on your life.