Forrest Gump in its list of the "Best 100 Conservative Movies" of all time. Then, in 2009, the magazine ranked the film number four on its 25 Best Conservative Movies of the Last 25 Years list. "Tom Hanks plays the title character, an amiable dunce who is far too smart to embrace the lethal values of the 1960s. The love of his life, wonderfully played by Robin Wright Penn, chooses a different path; she becomes a drug-addled hippie, with disastrous results." James Burton, a communication arts professor at Salisbury University, argued that conservatives claimed "Forrest Gump" as their own due less to
Forrest Gump (character) sitting where he and his mother sat waiting for the bus, seeing Little Forrest off on his bus ride to school, telling him that he loves him and that he will be waiting for him. The portrayal of Forrest in the original novel differs from how he was portrayed in the film. In the novel, Forrest is shown to be somewhat cynical and abrasive, while in the film, he is more placid and naïve. The novel also describes him as being a savant with extraordinary talent in numerical calculation (as shown when he states the exact amount of time in