Top 10 Most Overrated Iconic Movie Lines

3) “Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” – Forrest Gump, 1992

Tom Hanks speaks this line (ranked number 40 on the AFI list) as the title character in the 1992 film Forrest Gump, a movie about a guy so stupid he arrives at a bus stop two hours and twenty minutes early.

While he’s waiting, he tells a bunch of strangers who apparently don’t keep up with current events about how he met three presidents, influenced both Elvis Presley and John Lennon, started the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, uncovered the Watergate scandal, became a millionaire, ran across America, and most importantly, coined the term “sh*t happens.” (Hey, why wasn’t that line ranked number 40 on the AFI list?)

Like the movie it’s from, this line is fun, but doesn’t really stand up to close scrutiny. You see, boxes of chocolate are actually fairly predictable. They may be assorted, but anyone who has experience eating them is fairly familiar with the usual suspects. See that lumpy one? Those are nuts. Gross. The long, log-shaped one? That’s caramel. See that heart shaped one? Yeah, that’s just a solid chunk of chocolate, shaped like a heart.

So no, the fact that you may occasionally accidentally eat something with a cocunut filling because you thought it was going to have cream in it simply isn’t that analogous to the way that one man can go from watching his friend and fellow soldier die in Vietnam to showing LBJ his butt.

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