Forrest Gump, Fit for a Film or Best as a Book?

In the ever so popular, inspiring, hilarious, and depressing movie, “Forrest Gump” (Filmed in 1994 Directed by Robert Zemeckis), it follows the life of a man by the name of Forrest Gump played by the brilliant Tom Hanks. Throughout his life he does pretty much anything that you can name; like living through and recovering from a broken spine, teaching the one and only Elvis Presley moves that defined him at his performances, going to war, even going as far as becoming a ping pong champion. Needless to say he?s been everywhere and back and lived his life to the fullest, filled with the good and bad.

Now the book on the other hand (Released in 1986 Written by Winston Groom) is fairly similar in more ways than one that’s for sure. Although there are only a few differences between the novel and the movie. One of the first is that in Groom’s version of Forrest Gump, they described Forrest as a 6’5” 242 pound giant. While in the movie he may be fairly tall, but he looks to be nowhere near 242 pounds. Secondly, in the book Gump becomes an astronaut and travels to outer space soon meeting an ape named Sue. Later crash landing into a jungle filled with cannibals, when in the film adaption he does some crazy things, but nothing at all like that.

Another is that he becomes a world class chess player, while in the movie, he instead becomes an international ping pong champion. In the book, Gump is a lean-mean swearing machine, while Tom Hank’s rendition was an innocent non-cursing sweetheart. Now in both the film and story, Forrest comes across a young man named Bubba, but the way they meet are very different. In Groom’s version, Gump meets Bubba while he was at University. While in Zemeckis’s version, Gump meets Bubba while he was at war.

Now the actors that you choose for a film, -especially when it comes to a book adaption- they can make or break the film. Now do I think that they chose the right people to imitate, well lets start with the man that this whole thing is about, Forrest Gump. Gump as I had said before, was played by the talented acting mastermind Tom Hanks. Seeing that he got an Oscar for best actor in a leading role, I’m almost positive that he did a more than exceptional job. As for a couple of other actors and actress’, they didn’t get any Oscars or nominations, but had an outstanding performance and there is no denying that. Supporting Actress, Robin Wright playing the role of Jenny Curran got an Oscar Nod for best performance by an actress in a supporting role in a motion picture, being Gump’s love interest is a hard task to live up to but boy did she deliver.

Now to decide whether you should invest your time into reading a book, or your money and a couple of hours into a movie. I would say that the movie is most likely a better choice, not only because I’m like 99.99% lazy. But because you’ll understand the reason they got six Oscars, along with an additional 40 wins and not to mention the 47 nominations.