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The Giver

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The Giver (2014)

August. 15,2014
|
6.4
|
PG-13
| Drama Science Fiction
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In a seemingly perfect community, without war, pain, suffering, differences or choice, a young boy is chosen to learn from an elderly man about the true pain and pleasure of the "real" world.

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Reviews

Cubussoli
2014/08/15

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

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Glucedee
2014/08/16

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

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AnhartLinkin
2014/08/17

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

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Payno
2014/08/18

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

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s-16089
2014/08/19

The book is significantly different from the book in one they changed the movie into more of a romance. The chief of elders is antagonist, Asher is more mature and more serious,And fiona starts have feelings, And added a whole bunch of random scenes. I understand that they changed up the movie to be more dramatic and attract the young adult and tween audiences but they could have been better in my opinion. I rate it a 5.

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dachiri
2014/08/20

I kind of avoided this movie since I read the book as young teenager and it had its intended effect. But I finally had an evening to spare with it on Netflix, so I watched. Just like the book, it had me in tears pretty quickly. It held close enough to the book such that the story was recognizable, but obviously took creative license to make it more interesting on the big screen.My big, major complaint is using the love story line. Jonas was *12* in the original book, and there was no major love story. The escape story was also unnecessarily dramatic, and, frankly unrealistic for a story that is supposed to be fiction, not crazy sci-fi (Jonas did not get dropped off a waterfall, trudge through a desert, and climb and descend a mountain in knee-deep snow to leave the community and restore the memories).I was actually glad they showed the "elimination" of one twin, even if out of order, since that was an incredibly profound moment in the book.

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gian_99
2014/08/21

I watched this on Netflix, and was a bit unsure after reading some newspaper reviews from movie critics. I think this movie has been judged too harshly. I did not have any problem understanding the "how" human society got there. How it was possible to consider so much of the joys we take in life as something to be sacrificed for the opportunity not to suffer the pain we have. I did not have a problem to imagine a society orderly organizing the lives of every single member of the community. Some feature of the organization attained by the movie's society are old ideas really, out of some philosopher's dreams (or out of everybody else's nightmare): Plato's Republic came to my mind, during some parts of the movie, except that the society in the movies arrives to strikingly similar results from following objectives which are way different (getting rid of pain was not Plato's objective in an ideal organization of society). I liked the acting, especially in the character of the Giver, Fiona and Jonas. I think the use of black and white was interesting. What almost managed to ruin the whole movie was the rushed ending. It could have been much better: but as it is, it just looks like the money to keep filming suddenly finished up and they had to look for a quick way to end the movie. In any case it's still a 7.

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dreamlife613
2014/08/22

I'll start by saying that I did read the book many years ago in school and thought it was a good book at the time with an interesting, unexpected twist. I never went back to re-read it so while I knew what the gist of the story was, I didn't remember all the details.As a movie, I thought it was just OK. It wasn't bad, but there were several things keeping it from being great. First, the focus was on Jonas and The Giver moreso than any of the other characters, which made it hard to sympathize with the society. The actor playing Jonas was fine, not very memorable though. I would have liked to understand the perspectives of Fiona and Asher rather than just see them the way Jonas does - in broad strokes. The release of memories from The Giver to Jonas could have been shown or explained differently as I did not really understand how that process worked. Were they sharing a psychic link? Was there a chip embedded in their wrists allowing the transfers? Also, sometimes Jonas would see things as if he were living the past memories while other times it was more like he was seeing everything play out like a movie or something. Finally, the ending was not very satisfying. I won't spoil anything but there were things that happened that did not feel realistic or believable at all. The final scene was confusing. I would say if you have nothing else to watch and are interested in a fairly PG story, this is a pretty good one. So many TV and movies are so focused on violence, sex, and darkness that it is kind of nice to have a straight forward movie that makes you think a little in the process of watching it.

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