Among all of these recent young novel adaptations, sometimes we’ve had a repeat of Twilight, sometimes we’ve had something a little different. Now and then we’ll have something horrible, and occasionally we’ll get something that’s not so bad. Recently young adult novels have been taking place in future worlds and contain a message, such as Divergent and The Hunger Games. The Giver, the novel, was written in the ‘90s and not meant to be a teen romance novel. However, because the film is turned into such a thing, it comes off as derivate of past films, even though the source material came out before the source material as recent young adult films.
The Giver takes place in a utopian
society (in the future of course), in which all emotions have been taken from
people through medication. There are certain words and human actions that are
foreign to these people because the government, run by people known as The
Elders, believes that emotions just lead to violence and people should not be
given choices. The people in this society know nothing of past ways and think
of this society as normal. However, there is one person who has the memories of
the past and has emotions. He is known as the Receiver of Memories. This person
shares them with no one and just lives to pass them on to the next person
worthy of being the keeper of them. This person only comes once every 10 or so
years.
Jonas
(Brenton Thwaites) is this person who is learning to become the Receiver, and
is behind taught by the former Receiver, now known as The Giver (Jeff Bridges).
As Jonas starts to learn how much the society is holding back, he becomes a
rebel and tries to get the world back the way it was.
As this film
seems to borrow from many other films, many other films were really borrowing
from this one’s source material. However, this film was released too late to be
original, so it comes off as derivative and was very predictable. I have not
read the novel The Giver, so I don’t
know how much of the novel was changed to film for it to be more like recent
young adult novel adaptations. Though, I’m sure some changes were made by the
studios for more money.
The Giver will definitely be liked (and
already is being liked) by mainstream audiences. It’s an entertaining film with
a score that’s functional in that it’s loud and big enough to get the audience
to feel emotion. The movie moved very quickly and has some cool visual
elements. Because of these things, it will serve its purpose for most people.
But the critical response was not excellent, and I absolutely understand that
because I’m on the same page with the majority of critics. While I did find the
film entertaining, I saw little-to-no depth. While some may argue that there
was depth in the character of Jonas, there really isn’t. The illusion of depth
is apparent because of how important Jonas is to the plot of the film. Sadly, Jonas is mostly used a plot device, maybe
even a mcguffin, to push the story along. And Brenton Thwaites gives no help to
try to make Jonas a character with depth. I didn’t really care about Jonas and
I felt he was, to some extent, a weak protagonist.
Two really
good things about the film were Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep. In every one of
their scenes, it is clear that they are trying their best, and they succeed.
They both add depth to their characters and help give the film a boost in
quality. I won’t say that without them it would be horrible, but I will say that
they are definitely the best things about the film. If you look closely, you
can see that Katie Holmes is trying, but she doesn’t really add much to her
character. The best I can say is that she was functional in the film, and that’s
probably the best I can say about most of the other actors in the film.
When I said
that the film was fast-paced, it was meant as a positive… a bit. One of the
reasons it was so fast-paced is because it is very quickly edited. The film
feels very condensed so that the audience won’t get bored. The 94 minute run
time is definitely justified by the quick editing. It reduced the film down to
just its plot, and little depth in not just Jonas, but really all of the
characters. Because of this, the film just seems to… go. It feels like the plot
points just happen and there’s no justification behind them. The film seems as
if it’s just continuing to move on to get to the next plot point, them the next,
then the next.
The script
of the film is another factor that gives it little depth. It also helps
condense the movie down to just its plot. It’s a very thin script, and it makes
the movie feel thin, itself. There is not much character development on anyone.
The dialogue in the movie isn’t that great, either. Sometimes the dialogue was
inane. Every now and then it would get better, but it never really became good.
Generally, the dialogue was not bad, but it definitely wasn’t good either. The
film also feels somewhat sloppy at times. There’s a paragraph or two of
narration at the beginning, but then nothing for a while, and then one line
later. Then there’d be nothing for a while, a line or two later, nothing for a
while…
I won’t say
that direction in this film was bad, because it wasn’t. However, at times in
the film it almost felt like the director didn’t have much of the vision, so he
just created a few different angles for the scene to get across what it says in
the script. But this isn’t true for every scene in the film. There were some
scenes where some ambition was put in from the director. It seemed like the
directed wanted to make a good movie, but sometimes it seemed like he was
getting tired of it. But in general, the film is directed well.
The Giver serves its purpose for the
general audiences. It’s an entertaining movie with cool visuals and a good
score. It’s quickly paced and not boring. However, for me, it had little depth
and felt sloppy at times. Some of the actors weren’t that good, and I didn’t
really care about the characters. Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep were very good,
but the rest were functional if not bad.
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