The Giver Review
I wish this movie had given me more to care about.
So when I first heard about this film I made the immediate and completely logical assumption that it was an attempt to launch another of the interminable Twilightesque teenie bopper franchises. It had all the warning signs: two hot young boys who look like girls in a slightly futuristic fantasy society that oppresses their love and emotions while centered on a hot but bland young girl based on a novel that is supposed to be popular with young people. However at that point all of my friends who were in middle school in the 90’s told me it’s a classic that is taught in schools for some reason and is really good.
Then I saw it and found it to be another bland teen-centric romance in set in a future society bent on oppressing young love so I guess my first instincts were right? What sucks is the source material is supposed to be better than most but thanks to this bomb I am more inclined to read Star Trek fan fiction than anything by Lois Lowry. She may just be a brilliant writer but to me she looks and sounds like another half assed author who thinks all you need to be science fiction is some hovering robots and everyone wearing the same jumpsuits.
The point is it is exactly the same as any other teenage disposable income vacuums and not as well done as most of them. Sure it’s better than the Host or Mortal Instruments but the producers of the Hunger Games and Divergent would be well within their rights to spit on this film as they walk by. It does have Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep in it but honestly they weren’t enough to save the picture.
So remember how the Hunger Games and Divergent had some cool action to keep things interesting rather than depend solely on their otherwise bland protagonists? Well, the producers of this film must have looked at those films and said “Nope. We’ll have none of that.” This film is 94 minutes of absolutely zero happening. Normally I would fault a film this poorly developed storywise for being so short but honestly what else could they have put in here? More feelings developing? How about another exciting bicycle chase? Or another memory of two people dancing? Honestly unless they managed to insert the helicopter attack scene from Apocalypse Now or the Roy Batty death scene from Blade Runner more run time would have just made this film even more agonizing. Whoever the editor is must have the kind soul of Dr. Kevorkian as he mercifully opted to mercy kill this flick after a mere hour and a half.
If this story is true to the book then I don’t know why anyone thinks this woman is a good author. It is lick-electric-outlets stupid. Another case where someone thinks that science fiction doesn’t need the science part and we can just have anything happen because, you know, it’s science fiction. The whole plot kind of rotated around that idea and in the last five minutes a plot twist was pulled out that was only surprising in that it was so dismally dumb. Having members of your audience saying “WTF?” in the denouement is rarely a good sign unless you are Jean-Pierre Geunet.
Let’s talk a minute about a few of the stupider questions that came up in the film. So the society of this film is one where all emotion is repressed and all contact with the outside world cut off. There is no love, sex, joy, happiness, or color and anyone who is old or doesn’t conform to the standards is euthanized. Can someone tell me how this society was formed? Like Divergent or the Host I would buy a world with a ridiculous society set up but I need to know how it came about. Who was the first person who answered yes to the questions “How would you like to have all your memories erased, you sex drive eliminated, have massive Orwellian control over every aspect of your life, go color blind, be assigned to a job for life, and if you quit or you fail to fit into certain criteria we will kill you? Also when you get old enough to retire we’re going to Soylent Green your ass and if your kids whom you will never know don’t grow up fast enough they will get the same?” When you put it that way you have to wonder what kind of massive war occurred and how was everyone, even the ones who were in charge of this plan, convinced or coerced into doing this?
So the trick is one person in this society is the Receiver of Memories and the Giver is the last Receiver who gives the memories to the Receiver (oh, I see what they did there). First off how are memories transferred from one person to another? There was no sign of equipment or surgical enhancement and all Jeff Bridges did was grab the kids arms. This question could have literally been eliminated with one line of expository dialog. “The Giver is given a neural transmitter that allows him to give you these memories.”. Also the Receiver is supposed to remember all the memories of good and bad in society. You know, I couldn’t tell you what I had for dinner last night. How is one brain supposed to remember all that? Again, a simple line on the order of “We implanted a chip in your brain to greatly enhance your memory” would have made this all make sense.
So the Giver has memories of…everything? Some select things? He seems to have memories of times before this weird society was set up including a battle scene from Vietnam but how did he get all those memories? The people he was remembering would have died decades before this system was put into place so what’s the deal? In fact one of the first memories turned out to be a future event that the Receiver was going to have so how the hell did that happen (that was the big WTF moment)? In a finalist for the Stupidest Plot Device in Cinema History award if the Receiver crosses this magical border all his memories are transmitted to the entire population of the society, even though none of them have any kind of connection to the Receiver or any of the humans the memories are from? Again how did this happen? Is their technology connected to some kind of gestalt human consciousness? That would make slightly more sense but how about saying something like “All human experience is shared by the gestalt human consciousness and that is what we are tapping into.” See what I mean about how easy these questions would be to eliminate by anyone who knew how to write science fiction?
Of course if that were true wouldn’t all the memories go to all the other humans on the planet? Also if out of no where everyone in your society was flooded with all the good and bad memories of human experience wouldn’t you all go absolutely bug nuts and start eating each others skin? When the basic plot points are this badly conceived or explained it’s rare that you get anything other than cheesy schlock.
The story, I guess. Three friends in this bizarre future society are about to graduate from their childhood. Asher (Cameron Monaghan-Shameless, Click, Vampire Academy) is kind of a wild child and is assigned being a drone pilot (oh, topical!). Fiona (Odeya Rush-The Odd Life of Timothy Green, We Are What We Are, Little Girl Blue) is supposed to take care of babies in a baby factory. Jonas (Brenton Thwaites-the Signal, Maleficent, Oculus) is the protagonist and is destined to be the new Receiver of Memory, a job that advises the memory-less leaders on matters (um, what happens if the Receiver slips in the shower and cracks his skull open before transmitting his memories? His job can’t be that important if they don’t have a backup).
Jonas meets the Giver (Jeff Bridges-the Big Lebowski, Tron Legacy, True Grit. Dude image courtesy of the movie t shirt category) who is a gruff old man who starts transmitting memories to Jonas via wrist lock. He starts off with good memories and Jonas starts seeing in colors again. He starts skipping his daily anti-emotion and bonerbegone injections and starts to feel emotions for Fiona and a baby named Gabe. He questions why society would get rid of all these things. There is also a sub plot about a previous Receiver who freaked out in exactly the same way and was given the lethal injections.
(sorry to keep doing this but it seems that the nature of the job would cause a certain amount of rebelliousness from the Receiver. How is it anyone actually survived long enough to be the Giver? I’m just saying)
So Jonas is freaking out and is being given the stink eye by the Chief Elder (Meryl Streep-Guardians of the Galaxy, the Hours, The Devil Wears Prada). Meanwhile his father determines that Gabe, the baby, isn’t growing fast enough and needs to “sent to Elsewhere”. This is what happens to everyone who doesn’t fit in properly and means being killed, but everyone believes that they are all retired and enjoying their lives in spite of the fact that no one ever comes back to visit or contacts anyone (umm, yeah. I’m not even going to bother). Based on a hand drawn map he and the Giver determine that if he crosses the Border of Memory everyone in their world will remember all the things that never happened to them.
So he gets chased out by some motorcycle guys and jumps off a cliff while carrying a baby. His old buddy Aster is sent to kill him via drone (topical!) but lets him live by dropping him and the baby safely into a river rapids. Jonas then crosses a desert, rocky wasteland, and snow covered mountains while subsisting on rocks and boogers (I assume. There was no sign of flora, fauna, or water and even if there were he had the survival skills of the baby he was carrying) for himself and the infant (babies can survive for days with no food or water, right? Oh, yeah he was giving baby Gabe memories of being fed. I guess that counts as nourishment. Wait a minute! If he could transmit his memories to any fool why didn’t he just do that to his friends or the people trying to kill him?). Eventually he gets to the stupidest ending ever and the movie mercifully ends.
The stars:
The film was kind of stunning visually. There was a lot of great camera work and as much as I disliked the story I won’t take that away. One star. Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep did add a multiplicative effect, although remember that 100×0 still equals 0. One star. I thought the kids they got to play these characters actually did a decent job of it. Acting was commendable. One star. Total: three stars.
The black holes:
The whole movie was based on a dumb concept, and the plot seemed to revel in generating unanswered (yet easily answerable) plot holes. Two black holes. The whole ending was the entire stupidity of the rest of the film increased by a couple orders of magnitude. One black hole. Criminally short. Had they added another 10 minutes of scenes just to explain stuff this would have been a much better movie. One black hole. Boring as all hell. Nothing ever happens. Even the run away chase scenes were action Valium. One black hole. I honestly think a real disservice has been done to the author. In the book the kids are all 11 and I have a feeling a lot more explaining was going down (this does not mean I will read those books. This film has spoiled that opportunity). She should be pissed off at the production company. One black hole. Another pathetic attempt to suckle on the teat of the teenage romance market that failed by being another bland remake of other, better and worse, movies. Some original thought might have been of benefit here. One black hole. There was not a single character I gave a damn about. The ending could have been that when Jonas crosses the border everyone dies of a brain aneurism and I would not have cared. In fact if they had done the whole “Everyone goes nuts and eats each others skin” it would have made for an infinitely better movie. One black hole. In general a waste of time. One black hole. Total: nine black holes.
So a total of six black holes. Somehow I think I will not get the hate email I got for dumping on Twilight. There just isn’t the fan base behind these books that other books have. Is it worth seeing? In my opinion maybe, but only if you go in expecting nothing to happen. I’d say wait until NetFlix. Date movie? If boredom turns your date on go for it. There is nothing to offend and even the PG-13 was almost a PG. Safe but boring.
Thanks for reading. I’m in Vegas for the next couple days but will try to see Expendables 3 while I’m out there. Follow me on Twitter @nerdkungfu. If you have comments on this film or my review post them here and email me with off topic questions or suggestions. Thanks and have a great day.
the Infamous Dave Inman
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