In TvTropes archives, under the section for "Idiot Houdini" we have this entry:
"Forrest Gump... ...He fumbles and stumbles through life pursuing on a whim whatever seems like a good idea at the time, yet nothing he ever does throughout the film leads to negative consequences for him."
I have to disagree with it. A great deal does go wrong for Forrest. He meets with great success and great tragedy. He is violently bullied as a child. Loses a close friend in combat in Vietnam. Has a difficult and troubled relationship with the woman he loves, which often places him in violent and dangerous situations. Loses his wife to illness and has to raise his son alone.
I want the reader to pause for a moment and imagine this life again, but told through different eyes. Your childhood friend and pseudo-sweetheart is sent into foster care because her father is sexually abusive. She is expelled for posing in Playboy, and ends up bouncing from bad situation to bad situation. You do well in College playing football, and would probably drafted to the NFL, but are instead drafted into Vietnam. There much of your squad is massacred, including your closest friend. You manage to save some of your squad and your commanding officer- but he ends up crippled and traumatized with PTSD and caustically blaming you because he wanted to die. You find a talent for table tennis and are used by the military as a political show piece. You eventually do meet your childhood sweetheart and marry her, only to discover she has a terminal illness and you have a son you'd never met before. Also this happens around the time your mother dies. Keep in mind you never knew your father. Through luck and circumstance, you made it rich due to a natural disaster; another case where, like in Vietnam, you were rewards while those around you suffered.
Told through any other eyes, the tale of the life of Forrest Gump would be a tragedy on a scale with "The Great Gatsby" or "Citizen Kane". The Key difference here, is Gump's perspective. Now, we know that Forrest Gump is cognitively disabled to a certain degree. But, and this is key, so does he.
Two key points in the film make that clear. The first is his declaration to Jenny that "I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is." The Second is his fear, upon meeting his son, that Forrest Jr. may share his disability: "He's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen but is he smart or is he - (Places hand on chest).."
Forrest is not smart, but he is self aware. The deaths of Bubba, and Jenny and his mother all show that he is not incapable of experiencing sadness or despair. His generosity to Bubba's mother, and Lieutenant Dan, and his bulldozing of jenny's childhood house show his understanding of the troubles of other and of his empathy and compassion.
Forrest could easily have fallen to the same despair that afflicted Dan and Jenny. He had the capacity, the film makes that clear if we look- he chose not to do so. And in so doing he lifted up and redeemed those around him, Dan and Jenny in particular.
Forrest Gump isn't some idealist who believes unflinchingly in some divine plan, as evidenced by this quote:
"I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floatin' around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it's both."
Forrest isn't an Idiot Houdini in this film, he's an anti-nihilist. And just maybe, he's a living Buddha.
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