FORREST GUMP is a vaguely picaresque story of a mentally retarded but good-hearted fellow who grows up during the 1960s and 1970s, serving in the Vietnam conflict, running a shrimping trawler, and pursuing a very unlovable childhood sweetheart. He has no control over his life, but is not smart enough to realize it or care. Gary Sinise co-stars as Lt. Dan Taylor, Gump's ex-C.O. who follows him around after the war like an albatross hung around his neck.

It's been five years since I saw this movie, but I still remember how it annoyed me, chiefly by appealing to the basest, most jaded parts of the viewers' personalities. The worst instance was when Forrest Gump tells the audience that his sweetheart Jenny's father loves her a lot, always hugging and kissing her. In my theater, a raucous, cynical snicker rippled through the audience at that line; we are intended to conclude from that statement that Jenny's father is sexually abusing her, and Zemeckis later confirms this leap to a sick conclusion. It is a truly sad commentary both on the entertainment industry and on the viewing public at large that the very concept of fatherhood today is so disrespected that for a father to hug and kiss his daughter is taken per se as a sign of sexual abuse.

Jenny's character is so despicable that Gump's love for her is inexplicable. Perhaps it is intended as an example of really "unconditional" love, and shows what a sorry thing that kind of love is, much like the wife who clings to an abusive husband no matter what he does to her. Her character hits rock bottom when, having abandoned Gump like a used-up tissue and taken his child from him without even informing him, Jenny refuses even to apologize to him because she was "messed up." Gump swallows this excuse with stomach-turning ease.

Now I don't want to launch into some Pat-Robertson-like tirade on the decline of American morality. American morality is better today than in the past in many ways. Racial hatred has gone from being an accepted norm to being absolutely intolerable. Rape is blamed on the victim less frequently than in bygone days. Sexual double standards are being abandoned. Religious tolerance and inter-faith amity are on the upswing. But in some other ways, American morality is deteriorating, and this one excuse, "I was messed up," is perhaps the best example. Every kind of barbarism, from Jenny's cruel and heartless manipulation of Gump up to and including cold-blooded murder, is now excused with the phrase "I was messed up," followed by an endless litany of the wrongdoer's misfortunes. FORREST GUMP wantonly tries to widen this tear in the fabric of the viewers' moral thought. I'm not buying into it. Being "messed up" may excuse viciousness against the person who messed you up; it should never be allowed to justify hurting innocent people.

The movie's exploitation of the mentally handicapped for cheap laughs is also tasteless and vulgar (and yes, I will shamefacedly admit, I laughed at some of this exploitation). I may not want a mental deficient like Gump for an airline pilot, but he deserves to be treated with at least basic decency and courtesy, which this movie doesn't; (i.e. where Gump, shaking Richard Nixon's hand, says "I gotta pee." This is funny?).

The mitigating, if not the saving, virtue of FORREST GUMP is the acting. Tom Hanks' rendition of a speech impediment might not fool the parent of a mentally retarded child or a speech pathologist, but it certainly convinced me and the average moviegoer. Hanks generates the innocence and pleasantness required of the character, and while the voice grated on my nerves a few times, it was bearable. Gary Sinise as Lt. Dan Taylor is absolutely wonderful, oozing bitterness and cynicism from every pore.

I also give FORREST GUMP some grudging praise for being one of the few movies to use the wonders of modern digital special effects to actually drive the plot, rather than distract from it. TITANIC and JURASSIC PARK also broke some ground, but for the most part I think that most directors lack the imagination to get the most out of the potential of modern special effects. Zemeckis integrates the effects into his movies more smoothly than most directors have.

I didn't really hate FORREST GUMP. It obviously wants to be loved so much that hating it would be like kicking an annoying puppy. But it's morally obtuse, shallow and vulgar. The laughs are guilty laughs, and the philosophy is nothing deeper than the credo that God does indeed look after fools.

Rating: ** out of ****.