Soothing, non-threatening hero for our confused modern times? Or just another success story manufactured by the Hollywood hype machine?
The star of the surprise movie phenom of summer may have an IQ of only 75, but his box office is well into triple digits.
On a steady climb to the $200 million box-office mark - which it is likely to hit this weekend, a rare feat shared this year only by megahit The Lion King - Forrest Gump has become more than just another big film.
A package that cleverly combines a star at the height of his power (freshly Oscared Tom Hanks), amazing techno-wizardry on the screen (he looks as if he's really interacting with JFK, LBJ and Nixon), the delicate touchstone characters of Zelig and Being There, and an appeal to anyone from about 8 to 80, Gump has grown from movie to message.
"Tom Hanks is who we are on our best day - the day we're funniest and most charming and make the people around us feel our best," says Christopher Connelly, executive editor of Premiere magazine. "We all would love a piece of that in our lives."
Never mind that Hanks' Gump doesn't get it. Or that he, more than anyone, would be stumped by his own evolution into cultural icon.
That's the reason we love him.
"He's the ideal citizen for a modern world: a perfect idiot," writes pundit P.J. O' Rourke in his introduction to Gumpisms: The Wit and Wisdom of Forrest Gump (Pocket Books, $5), a little book of pithy sayings that is currently No. 24 on USA TODAY's best-selling books list.
Though it only sold 10,000 copies when it first came out in 1986, a paperback version of Winston Groom's novel, Forrest Gump, is currently No. 1, with more than 1.2 million copies in print.
A sequel book about Gump and his relationship with his son has already been bought (Groom hasn't even finished it yet) and Pocket is publishing three of Groom's earlier works that are currently out of print.
The two-CD soundtrack with 32 songs from three decades of the rock era is outselling the Rolling Stones' Voodoo Lounge and is No. 2 on Billboard's album chart.
Already, the movie has been the subject of essays in Time and Newsweek on why we are worshiping a man who gives us wisdoms like, "Never cut your own hair."
A slow but sweet Alabama star-athlete-turned-war-hero-turned-shrimp-mogul who fumbles through life but always seems to wind up in the right place at the right time, Gump has a stronghold on our hearts as he helps rewrite our baby boomer history.
And any time that happens, it becomes imprinted on our culture.
Audiences, wrote Time, are being "Gumped."
"In Gump We Trust" was the headline of a Washington Post piece in which Hillary Rodham Clinton guru Michael Lerner discussed the "Forrest Gump factor" as it applies to liberalism.
The New York Times' Frank Rich has compared Forrest Gump to Bill Clinton.
Fiction and fact are now even intermingling. On Sunday, the Disabled American Veterans will give actor Gary Sinise the National Commander's Award for his portrayal of a combat-injured double amputee in one of the movie's more powerful performances.
Everybody wants a piece of the Gump. Radio stations hold contests for making up your own Gumpisms. And you can call 800-588-4867 to order your very own Bubba Gump hat and T-shirt for $18 each, plus $3.95 shipping and handling.
So what's the appeal?
"You could argue the character of Forrest Gump reflects our own confusion and makes us feel better about our own confusion," says Connelly.
Gump isn't confused about anything. He isn't capable of being confused about anything.
"Most theatrical images are always ones of unattainable height for most people," says Gerald Celente of the Trends Research Institute. "They're extra handsome men and overly gorgeous women and most people know in their minds that that's not going to be them. With Forrest Gump, it's low intellect. It's very easily attainable. It makes you feel good that you're OK."
So cool is Forrest Gump that now a backlash is occurring - with critics saying things like "sophisticated people shouldn't like it," says his original creator, Groom, 51.
But Groom, an Alabamian like Gump, figures, "There's always a sourpuss in every crowd. They don't like the movie? It don't bother me. 'Cuz I can see 32 million Americans do."
He credits the film's co-producer Wendy Finerman for sticking with Gump for eight years and making the film a reality and a triumph. On paper, the story of a simple man wasn't a sure-sell like Arnold Schwarzenegger as a superspy (True Lies) or Harrison Ford as a government do-gooder in another Tom Clancy movie (Clear and Present Danger).
"These people at Paramount put a lot of dough on the line - $50 million," says Groom.
Even though there were changes in Forrest Gump's character from book to movie - he was originally far more sexually adventurous and used drugs - Groom says, "The movie keeps true to the Forrest character, which is why people like it. It says to me you don't have to be rich or famous or even smart to be a dignified person. I think Forrest is a dignifed person in the face of a great many indignities."
Much of the credit has to go to Hanks, whom CNN movie analyst Martin Grove calls "the Arnold Schwarzenegger of adult-appeal films." Especially after audience-pleasing successes in Sleepless in Seattle and Philadelphia.
Just like its character, Gump may be one of a kind. Although the usual way in Hollywood is to immediately order copycats of any money-making movie, industry observers say it's almost impossible with Gump.
"One or two people will try it," says Robert Osborne, columnist for The Hollywood Reporter. "It happens every time. When On Golden Pond came out, it was such a hit and then Driving Miss Daisy followed . . . But people didn't go because those were about old people. It doesn't mean people will start buying scripts about people with low IQs."
The ultimate Gumpism learned by Hollywood, says Grove, may be that "an unconventional film can succeed in a big way."
Just like in the movie, when Gump becomes a kind of running-craze messiah in his back-and-forth dashes across the country, trend-oids are feeling compelled to jump on the Gump bandwagon.
"The movie has settled in the same way as Batman and Jurassic Park," says Grove. "No one wants to be the only one not to see it and not be able to talk about it, whether on the assembly line or country club."
Or at the law firm.
Michael Jacobs, a 25-year-old Washington, D.C., lawyer, changed his answering machine message after seeing Forrest Gump and joking with a friend about it.
When you dial his home number, you hear a slow Southern drawl say: "Hi, this is Mike Jacobs. . . . People call me Mike Jacobs. . . Leave a message and I'll get back to you."
