FORREST GUMP (Directed by Robert Zemekis. Starring Tom Hanks. Robin Wright, Gary Sinise, Sally Field)

Already the box office hit of the year in the US, Forrest Gump is a movie set to divide critical opinion, the kind of feel good spectacle that will make some people feel so good they wanna puke. Stretched across three astonishingly recreated decades, it follows the adventures of an intellectually challenged (IQ 75) southern mama’s boy who somehow not only witnesses the key events of America’s recent history but influences them for the better.

He inspires Elvis and John Lennon, meets presidents, becomes a national celebrity and millionaire without ever realising what the hell is going on. His sheer stupidity makes him a war hero in Vietnam, where he blindly follows orders and comments, “Everybody seemed to be looking for someone called Charlie.” Forrest is an accidental hero, the ultimate personification of the American Dream: you don’t even have to know what you’re doing to make it to the top.

If this is satire, it is hard to tell exactly what it is satirising. Not the American dream itself, that’s for sure, because the film is too sentimental and optimistic, and events too incredibly manipulated for such a negative reading. Although set against a backdrop of racism (the Alabama school segregation confrontations), war (Vietnam), civil strife (anti-Vietnam movement) and political corruption (Watergate) this is a story in which nice guys finish first, and it has been clutched to the American bosom precisely because it makes Americans feel so good about themselves.

‘Shit happens’ is a phrase that is attributed to Forrest, who goes through life uttering little folksy sayings that people can read their own meanings into . But the problem is, shit never happens to Gump, only good stuff. In Voltaire’s Candide, the fool tries as hard as he can to make it in the world, but shit keeps happening until he learns some hard and profound lessons. But Forrest never learns anything. While the similarly blank Chance in Being There was a holy fool, employed as an instrument of political satire, Forrest is just a fool. He’s a nice guy because he doesn’t know any different.

Played by Tom Hanks with his likeability indicator set just below nauseating, Forrest is presented as a blank guide to the times, whose absence of self-awareness allows the viewer to make his own interpretations. In America he has been hailed as both a conservative hero (upholding family values and old fashioned morals) and a liberal one (depicting goodness triumphing over America’s inbuilt evils). But since all the historical and cultural references are so specifically American, it is hard to judge whether non-Americans will find him any kind of hero at all, rather than just a comic figure at the centre of a special effects extravaganza.

And the effects certainly are special. Robert Zemekis, creator of Back To The Future, Roger Rabbit and Death Becomes Her has used his Industrial Light and Magic tricks to place Forrest at the heart of history, enhancing realism rather than creating fantasy. In shots that make Forrest’s precursor Zelig seem transparently fake, Hanks is seemlessly integrated into footage with the likes of Kennedy and Lennon. The film covers a lot of ground with wit, energy and panache, and might be best enjoyed as a spectacular entertainment as mindless as the central character. If you look too hard for meaning, you may be disturbed by what you find: that the principal female character is made the repository of everything negative, that sexual promiscuity is punished by AIDS, and that the hippy values of the sixties were as venal and corrupt as those of the political establishment.

“Life is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’ll get,” is one of Forrest’s oft quoted sayings. The movie Forrest Gump is a lot like a box of chocolates itself: sweet and full of surprises, but you may feel sick at the end.