Movie Review - The Giver

The Giver ** (PG-13) This review contains some possible spoilers, but not as many as the script. This post-apocalyptic sci-fi drama takes us to a sanitized new culture that’s risen from the ashes, carefully crafted to eliminate all memories and most emotions, since anything but rigidly-maintained equality breeds the resentments and desires that lead to bad stuff. It’s based on an acclaimed novel for the “young adult” market. Presumably, that means people who haven’t been around long enough to have seen the premise in a slew of better films. This one is visually interesting, but numbingly dull, despite a cast that includes Meryl Streep and Jeff Bridges.

Only one person in each idyllic community is designated as the Receiver of all the pre-disaster memories, which he/she uses to advise the ruling council, without sharing the details of our feral past. Our hero is chosen to succeed the aging one, (Bridges), who becomes the titular giver of our past. It’s hard to handle for one raised in a pleasant state of physical and emotional sterility. Those with bipolar disorders often stop their medications because the price of living in zone of calmness is missing the highs that would be so gratifying to avoid the crashes that followed. This place is living on something akin to lithium.

Inevitably, once love, music and other perks of the past are revealed, they become irresistible despite the downside of possibly unleashing the suppressed darker side of our natures. Will the new Receiver deliver a wake-up call to the rest? Can they handle it better that those who decimated the planet generations before them?

Don’t be too annoyed by the black & white photography. There’s actually a reason for it that isn’t budgetary...and some hues will be added. The blandness of the plot is a bigger drawback than that aspect of the cinematography. The Giver is the first of four related novels, meaning more movies may follow. Neither Harry Potter nor Katniss from the Hunger Games need feel threatened, based on this beginning. (8/15/14)