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 usually enough to approximate true depth and grace." At the website Metacritic, the film earned a rating of 82 out of 100 based on 20 reviews by mainstream critics. CinemaScore reported that audiences gave the film a rare "A+" grade. The story was commended by several critics. Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" wrote, "I've never met anyone like Forrest Gump in a movie before, and for that matter I've never seen a movie quite like 'Forrest Gump.' Any attempt to describe him will risk making the movie seem more conventional than it is, but let me try. It's a