2.5 stars (out of 5)
Lois Lowry’s 1993 young-adult-type novel has long been mooted as a feature film, but bad timing means that now it’s finally been made, the result looks like a rip-off of The Hunger Games and Divergent (which is itself a Hunger Games rip-off, but don’t tell anyone). And that’s unfortunate as, in fact, The Giver is instead a rip-off of 1984, Brave New World, THX 1138 and even Logan’s Run.
Directed by Aussie Phillip Noyce in his first major effort since Salt, this is set in the futuristic ‘Community’, which was established from ‘The Ruin’ and appears to be a utopia of peace, order and ‘Sameness’, although we know better as it’s filmed in B+W (a trick borrowed either from Pleasantville or The Wizard Of Oz). Jonas (Brenton Thwaites), a special kid as he sometimes sees green in the trees above and red in the hair of his pal Fiona (Odeya Rush), is soon to be assigned his life’s position at an elaborate Ceremony, and when he’s chosen (by Chief Elder Meryl Streep) to be ‘Receiver Of Memories’ things really start to happen. Travelling to the edge of the Community, he meets with grizzled Elder ‘The Giver’ (Jeff Bridges, a fan of the book) and is psychically shown memories of a past world of light, joy, beauty, colour and love, and later the darker side of human experience, complete with hate, anger, fear and pain. The Giver rightly assumes that Jonas might not be able to handle the shock, just like Rosemary (Taylor Swift!), who was a Receiver 10 years ago and went mental, and Jonas tries to keep to the rules of the Community for a while but then rebels. And soon he’s rejecting his daily medications, dancing with his sister, disobeying his assigned parents (dull Alexander Skarsgård and duller Katie Holmes), breaking out of the Community and learning all about death and sex (although that word isn’t used here: no, it’s just ‘desire’).
A movie of compromises and miscalculations (the novel is for teens but the movie is M Rated, just for starters), Noyce’s production means well and, like Lowry’s book, attempts potent points about emotions and the wonderful messiness of life, but the whole humourless thing tends to beat you over the head with ‘messages’ after a while. And niggling questions remain: how did anyone expect Thwaites to be interesting or amiable as Jonas when the character is such a bore? Why did the Christian propaganda company Walden Media get involved when this tries so damn hard to include visions of religious diversity? Why does the Community allow anyone to be a Receiver when all it ever does is cause trouble? And why is Bridges doing a hippy variation on his Dude from The Big Lebowski? Has he forgotten how to act?
(An abridged version of this review appeared on the Rip It Up website on September the 15th 2014)
I Wake Up Screening 