The Giver

2014 • 97 minutes

About this movie

Based on Lois Lowry’s beloved, best-selling young adult novel, the haunting story of THE GIVER centers on Jonas (Brenton Thwaites), a young man who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Yet as he begins to spend time with The Giver (Jeff Bridges), who is the sole keeper of all the community’s memories, Jonas quickly begins to discover the dark and deadly truths of his community’s secret past. With this newfound knowledge, he realizes that the stakes are higher than imagined – a matter of life and death for himself and those he loves most. With the odds against him, Jonas knows that he must escape their world to protect them all – something no one has ever done before.

Ratings and reviews

This is one of the worst movies ever! The acting is horrible, script was terrible and the leading character is the biggest idiot ever! The movie was completely rushed considering how quickly the Jonas went from 0-60 with his overall plan. Also, he had very little provocation to carry out plan while attempting the flea the community with an infant in hand. How anyone would believe he, let alone a baby, would survive the chain of events that followed escaping the nursery. I've never been so disappointed.

The book was a cautionary tale against excessive safety, niceties at the expense of humanity, and sterile etiquette at the expense of real friendships. Apparently our society is too close to what the book warned us about, because this movie instead loses focus partway through and goes out of it's way to assign negative emotions (anger, sadism, etc) to the bad guys, just to make sure the audience doesn't agree with them. It's sad that sterility on its own is no longer viewed as a bad thing.

Complete rubbish.. painful to watch. These mainstream kid's movies are ruining the movie going experience. Spoiler: Young man or woman goes against a utopia society that isn't all it's confessing to be. (Insert bad guys , and an unconventional mentor) = Ending where protagonist turns out to be a hero and learns a little something along the way. Equation has been figured out.. Now Hollywood give me a million dollars to direct the next one.