Forrest Gump: This Sacred Cow needs to be Slaughtered

I have a few teensy issues with Forrest Gump.

Its picaresque structure is lazy and panders to an audience that desires a cutesy, uplifting moment delivered every ten to twelve minutes. Its thematic content is not only intellectually insulting, but is openly hostile to non-conformist attitudes, self-discovery, and the questioning of conservative authority structures. It also spuriously and vapidly links rebellious youthful behavior with dying of a horrible disease and/or being abused a child.

I remember being mildly amused by the movie, then quietly annoyed, then openly hostile. Even more annoying than watching Forrest Gump is unsuccessfully trying to convince people that it is a bad movie.

Forrest Gump was completely undeserving of the Best Picture Oscar. In fact, IMHO Gump is the second most undeserving best picture winner of all time (Ms. Miniver over Casablanca still is the all-time champ). Several movies were far better that year. Shawshank was superior, and the winner should have been Pulp Fiction. Pulp Fiction's failure to win best picture, and to a lesser extent Jackson's Best Actor loss to Tom Hanks, was the moment in which I realized that the Academy Awards are complete garbage. This was further reinforced by Titanic and Beautiful Mind winning over L.A. Confidential and LOTR:FOTR, respectively, a few years later.