The Giver

2014 • 97 minutes
4.2
4.79K reviews
35%
Tomatometer
PG-13
Rating
Eligible
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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.
Rating
PG-13

Ratings and reviews

4.2
4.79K reviews
Loafy
March 15, 2022
Hear me out, if this movie was on its own and there was no other kind of media relating to it, it wouldnt be too bad of a movie. Dont get me wrong here the movie wasnt great, there were many parts of the movie that just didnt make any sense and the production wasnt very great either. Like how about the part where asher drops jonas from what looks like at least 50 meters up into a waterfall and jonas was fine. With all of that pretty heavily weighing on this movie's review let's talk about the comparison to the book. First off the movie is nothing like the book, asher becomes a drone pilot, it doesnt seem like the house of the old is even a thing, and most of the important parts are just not there which seems like why the entire plotline is completely different and quite a bit worse. And probably one of the worst parts about this movie is the actors. Almost all of these actors are very skilled and highly acclaimed actors such as Maryl Streep, Jeff Bridges, and even Brenton Thwaits. All of these actors have pasts of acting and are very good at it, but this movie really just wraps a plastic bag around that whole past of good acting. In all it's hard to diss this movie for much longer because it wasnt too bad, it had a pretty cool plotline and brought a whole new outlook on the giver as a whole. Now you can take that as a change or dirt on the book's name but either way the movie on its own was fairly good.
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Name Withheld
August 25, 2015
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.
3 people found this review helpful
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Tanner
March 25, 2015
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.
1 person found this review helpful
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