Review of The Giver (2014) by Orlando O — 01 Dec 2014

The time for movie studios to look into the book shelves and tries to adapt many futuristic dystopian novels onto the big screen. There is potential in bringing a good page to film in a good way without losing the audience that have read the novels or not. The Hunger Games and Divergent so far have done a great job in being entertaining without losing the story structure in rushing a novel's premise into a one hour and thirty minutes length like The Giver.

The Giver has such an interesting premise that I felt engaged until the movie ended. There were so many moments, the movie felt like it was rushed with character development. The second act of the movie, when Jonah (Brenton Thwaites) and the Giver (Jeff Bridges) was encountering each other for months, and Jonah was learning about the past while the movie made it looked like it only took a couple of days. It is a shame, even though; the story has potential to being a good science fiction film about a community in a dystopian future.

Brenton Thwaites was able to carry the lead; he did give a decent performance. Jeff Bridges was outstanding and Meryl Streep as well. Odeya Rush is charming and provided a decent performance for her role as well. There was not much of a running time for the movie to even have these characters develop. Screenwriters Michael Mitnick and Nikki Silver should have put a little more work into their writing and expanding the story that felt like it hit the cliff notes.

The Giver is a fair science fiction film, the movie was entertaining throughout, but the characters and story felt rushed which left no room for any developed.