Monkasi

FORREST GUMP was a much more enjoyable experience for me when I was a boy. I thought it was a wonderful, magical tale about taking life slow and easy. But now I am older, and I see it as little more than an overlong showcase of clichés in which Tom Hanks talks in an embarrassing Southern drawl and plays a cardboard caricature.

I admire Forrest for the good old boy that he is; unfortunately, that's ALL he is. If you will pardon the hyperbole, our mentally retarded hero is so pure and innocent and decent and good-hearted that he makes Jimmy Stewart's character in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE look like a child pornographer. Whether he's the knight in shining armor protecting girlfriend Jenny from any menace; the selfless warrior rescuing all his comrades in the heat of battle; or the pious Christian whose faith remains fervent even as Lieutenant Dan Taylor curses God, Forrest Gump never does anything morally questionable.

In addition, throughout the film Gump displays an "idiot savant" personality type that really gets on my nerves. Now I know that some autistic people are blessed with highly unusual skills, but it is simply not feasible that Forrest is perfect at everything he does. He runs faster, plays better ping-pong, assembles a rifle quicker, is more successful in the business world, and in general proves to be a whiz at almost everything through a combination of freakish talent and dumb luck.

Not to be insensitive, but I think Gump had it pretty swell. After miraculously overcoming a childhood infirmity (really!) by busting the braces on his legs through sheer willpower, Forrest has an infinite string of good luck while all of his friends and loved ones either die painful deaths, surrender to their personal demons, or become human vegetables. These are the characters we should feel sorry for, and not Forrest Gump.

If Gump had been plagued with at least ONE character flaw - alcoholism, for instance, or some kind of sexual disorder - then maybe I would find it easier to sympathize with him and rejoice in his many accomplishments. As it is, however, Hanks's character is hopelessly squeaky-clean.

Which is not to say that FORREST GUMP is an inherently bad movie. It's fine, I suppose, if you like simpleminded morality plays. For the more cynical among us, however, GUMP is just too gummy.

In my review for the similarly themed ZAPPED AGAIN!, I noted that it came across as a whitewashed T&A offering that was much better received as a puerile comedy than anything voyeuristic in nature. SCREWBALLS, which was apparently made on a much lower budget and with much less renowned performers, is the exact opposite - a chaotic carnival of soft-core porn in which the humor is at best unremarkable and at worst painful.

Some have compared this movie to NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE, but that comparison is extremely unjust. You see, ANIMAL HOUSE was not just an excuse to show drunken frat boys and girls in their underwear. It also tackled such trenchant topics as class conflict, race relations, and the lure of irresponsibility in a hopelessly puritanical and joyless world. I view it more as a poignant examination of the trials and tribulations of adolescence than as the purely tawdry slice of camp which it's usually tagged. The makers of SCREWBALLS do not deserve to lick the boots of John Landis and company.

SCREWBALLS was put together by a gaggle of confirmed slackers with absolutely no regard for taste and decency. The movie is unabashedly politically incorrect (granted, the idea of "political correctness" did not exist as such in the early 1980s; but these guys violated most of its tenets just the same) and is based on the erroneous belief that high school boys do not care about anything other than sex. While the members of Delta Tau Chi may not have been above reproach, at least they didn't spend most of their time trying to separate the prom queen from her clothes.

If you are a diehard fan of this genre, I don't want to spoil the ending for you. Let's just say that it involves sartorial decay and magnets, and leave it at that.

Female moviegoers will probably not enjoy SCREWBALLS because of its sexist nature, so I recommend that they skip it. Their male counterparts, on the other hand, might have a good time. But remember this, fellows: a movie about female stripping becomes less and less entertaining every time you see it - so limit your viewing of SCREWBALLS to one night.