'The Giver' A Review

The Giver is a social science fiction movie based on the novel of the same name. In what first appears to be a utopian world devoid of war, hate, and violence however we discover that sameness, climate control, and "release" have banished individuality, freedom, and love. The film opens on Jonas(Brenton Thwaites) and his friends on the eve of their graduation from childhood and the receiving of their lifetime occupation assignments. Jonas is excluded from the ceremony until the end, he is given an important position "Receiver of Memory". Thus begins Jonas's training, under the tutelage of The Giver(Jeff Bridges), Jonas begins to receive the collective memories of the society, exercised to facilitate sameness but kept in order for one person to have hindsight and foresight. Jonas begins to uncover disturbing truths about the world he thought he knew.

Jeff Bridges has stated in multiple interviews he tried for twenty years to adapt The Giver, battling with studios about content he finally got it made, unfortunately it is clearly a battle he lost. The beautiful, eloquent, and subtely complex book is rendered bland on screen, a victim to the "sameness" it purportedly rejects. The Giver a 1994 Newbery winner is the precursor and predecessor to the current YA craze however the film adaptation is given the Hunger Games treatment in order to enhance its marketability. The originality, emotionality, and social commentary of the source material is truncated and dumbed down with CGI glitz. An innocuous romance is injected and what modern distopian world would be complete without obliquely menacing drones?

The movie speeds through the transformation Jonas undergoes and devotes little time to the development of his relationship with The Giver. It devotes most of its time on the unimportant romance and in fabricating tension for an unsatisfying climax. Thwaites performance as Jonas is two-dimensional verging on the non-existent, this works for the first part of the story but the characters blossoming perspective is totally unbelievable. Bridges routine gruff voice and glowering overbite do not do his character, or himself, justice. The supporting cast is lost on how to portray an "emotionless" society with any depth. Meryl included.

With such rich and beloved source material it's no surprise this adaptation was a commercial perversion but it is a crushing disappointment. The movie serves only one purpose, a reminder. Those who haven't read the book should read it, those who have should revisit it.

Don't See It.