Review of The Giver (2014) by Spangle — 12 Apr 2017

It seems Hollywood has this factory in which it manufactures a variety of products. From bad by-committee scripts, unholy editing mishmashes at the behest of studios when a director gets too auteur for their liking, and of course their most rewarding product line: bland 20-something actors for young adult movies. Brenton Thwaites and Odeya Rush have to be the most bland of them all with both entirely lacking any semblance of acting ability, yet they look young and the teen target audience will find them mildly attractive. Thwaites is so bland, in fact, that I did not remember I saw him in Gods of Egypt where he was practically the lead. Now that is bland. He is a cardboard cut out of a young adult actor and Rush is hardly much better. The Giver also has a rare bad performance from Meryl Streep alongside a good one from Jeff Bridges, who constantly seems shocked by how bad the movie around him is turning out to be. You can practically see Bridges trying to remember how big the paycheck was for this one and trying to ascertain whether it was worth it or not in the end.

Surrounding these unfortunate actors is the plot of The Giver, which is actually quite compelling when considering just the premise. Set in a world where all emotion, feeling, memory, and color has been erased, the world is divided into communities watched over the elders, namely Chief Elder (Streep). At various stages of life, there are ceremonies. When one is given to their family, when they are nine years old, when they graduate from school and are given their job, and when they are released to elsewhere. At the graduation ceremony, Jonas (Thwaites) is skipped over and called last, as he is to become the new Receiver of Memory. He is the only one allowed to feel, have emotions, and learn about the past and what the world used to be and he must learn from The Giver (Jeff Bridges), who is the current receiver of memory. Yet, armed with his knowledge about how they "release" aka kill the elderly and babies, as well as his love of Fiona (Rush), Jonas wants to save the world and give everybody what the Elders had taken away many years ago.

Yet, how the film approaches this is quite heavy-handed. Acting all knowing, the film shows how with hate and war, which are bad and why feeling was stamped out, also comes love. And love is worth everything. While this may be true to some degree, it simply sounds preachy and then the film further digs its grave by including obnoxious montages where it celebrates life and shows the beauty of the world. It practically plays like an advertisement for life where the film constantly preaches about the power of love and how it outweighs hate in the world. Again, maybe true, but The Giver always comes off as pretending to know everything about the world and having to teach the viewer about what it all means. While it has a compelling premise, it panders too heavily to the young adult audience in this regard with an over-the-top demonstration of love and how it can solve all things. It is too naive and romanticized to really work and not come off as pandering, ham-fisted, and coming from a place of great superiority.

This same appeal to young adults is found in the "transformational" and "eye opening" romance between two bland leads that lack chemistry or any character development whatsoever. Instead, they are just young adult romantic stock characters that have this unspoken passion for one another even when neither are actually able to feel anything. They lack any definition and instead are written to have the other complete their worlds. In many respects, they are Manic Pixie Dream Boy/Girl's for one another and act entirely selflessly to advance the other, but ironically, when two Manic Pixie Dream Boy/Girl's meet, nobody advances. These are thinly written characters to the point that they are practically invisible. Every action is for plot convenience and the acting hardly breathes life into these stock characters found in The Giver.

For a film with such a compelling premise, it winds up being largely quite tame. With bad characters, a bad romance, bad acting, and a heavy handed and naive take on life and love, The Giver winds up piling up weaknesses that sinks its ship. Yet, these are mostly quite passive. None of these bad elements are absolutely abhorrent and the film never winds up battling between being bad and dreadful. Instead, it just toes the line and is entirely passively bad, going down with nary a whimper. It is a film that is content to appeal to its target demographic, present hollow and naive ideas that appear thoughtful and appeal to the minds of teenagers, and then toss out some bland young actors that also appeal to that demographic. It is a film that is defined by just how below average it is and how safe it plays everything. It is this paleness that relegates The Giver to being so average and safe that it is bad.