“I’d probably have loved it when I was eight.” During my discussion with two fellow cinema lovers that’s the comment, they both felt I should use in my review. So there it is, let’s start as we mean to go on. There’s nothing wrong with The Giver that’s easy to put a finger on.

A Stellar Cast

The cast is excellent. You have Jeff Bridges as the titular Giver, Meryl Streep as the Chief Elder, Katie Holmes as the least scary head of security ever and Alexander Skarsgard as some kind of medical personnel. Then there’re a few youngsters playing the roles of Jonas (the new Giver) and his two completely irrelevant friends. That’s probably one of the problems actually, the kids really don’t have that much to do or say and they’ve got to try and match performances with Oscar winners and amazing veterans like Skarsgard.

The kids do put in fine performances (hard not to with all that advice floating about) but no amount of quality acting was going to fix the problems with this film.

Excellent Sets and Camera Work

The film was directed by Philip Noyce and overall it looks  rather pretty. In the story, most of the humans are taking medication that amongst other things, mean they cannot actually see colour. Therefore large chunks of the film are in black and white until the main character, Jonas starts to see in living colour. That means you get some pretty well-done effects and, if you’re me, you panic that your Blu-ray player has broken and resort to Google to double check that this black and white stuff is intentional. Don’t get me wrong, this is NOT Sin City. It doesn’t have the style or the beauty but considering this is young adult sci-fi it all looks pretty great.

It’s not a horrific world like you’ll see in Mockingjay or Insurgent or the Maze Runner, it’s actually quite a pleasant black and white land these folks live in. The sets they’ve created make you wonder if they actually found some ultra-modern housing estate somewhere to set it in. I’m really hoping that as I work through these Blu-ray extras I’ll find out but they’re a bit weird so far so we’ll see! You shouldn’t really be faulting the look of this film any more than you should the acting.

Is it a Romantic Comedy?

The protagonists are teenagers, there’s a fairly pleasant world and a male and female young lead so there’s got to be some romance, right? Plus a whole bunch of gags about the whole situation? Right? Please tell me there are some charming teen romance and a few good jokes. Please? No? Are you serious? The whole film is like that, it’s joyless in that respect. There is, to be fair, a teeny bit of romance between Jonas and the only girl he knows (apparently). Now, if I’m not very much mistaken in the novel the kids are about 12 when it starts but in the film are more like 22-year-olds portraying 16-year-olds. I expect that’s why the romance is so light, they probably had to retcon it a bit in just to liven up the film.

Humour is problematic as well because the plot requires that people are having their emotions suppressed by their daily medication. Now just to be clear, if you’re thinking this film sounds a lot like a teen version of Equilibrium you’d be right. However that film came out way after the book and I expect you could find dozens of films and books prior to both with similar or almost identical future societies. What Equilibrium has is gun kata though. This film does not have gun kata or anything like it.

What about the awesome sci-fi action scenes?

You were hoping this would save the film, right? There’d be some great set pieces that are really exciting. I’m watching an extended scene right now called ‘Jonas Harrowing Journey’. That’s a bit of an overstatement. Ok, so there’s no way he could have survived this trip, nor could he have possibly crossed so many environments given that he’s got no equipment with him but it’s not really harrowing. It’s actually just unrealistic. This just isn’t a film that lends itself to any action at all, there’s not really an excuse for it. I can see why they cut it though as it’s just confusing and the complete lack of kit means there’s just no way he could have made it this far. He’s literally gone from a dip in a river to a desert to a forest to a snow-capped mountain range. Without any apparent source of food. Hmm. Perhaps it makes more sense in the book?

Blu-ray Extras

So far I’m unimpressed. There’s one extended scene that got deleted for apparently pretty good reasons. There’s a rather odd read through that Jeff Bridges did with his family (including the late great Bridges) about twenty years ago. There’s a lacklustre cast press conference which lacks the charm of a Comic-Con appearance. There’s no gag reel. Seriously? They even mention things in their press conference they think would go down well in a gag reel.

There’s hardly any information about how they made the film, no cool behind the scenes stuff, no director commentary of the film. Seriously, no commentary track? Who does that these days?

What about an amazing plot and a brilliant twist ending?

This is kind of the wrong order to do it in but this is deliberate. I wanted to set you up with a few things they’d done well before I told you why this film doesn’t really float my boat. The basic story is that Jonas, a young man living in a post-apocalyptic society is picked to be the next Receiver. Essentially a kind of living memory bank who is responsible for holding the painful memories of humanities violent past in order that they can provide advice to the council of elders (which you don’t actually have to be that old to join).

He’s picked at a highly original coming of age ceremony you will not have seen done elsewhere. Of course, he gets picked last and it’s a huge honour although no-one seems to know why. These people have suppressed their emotions far better than the Vulcans with the use of mind altering medication they receive daily.

Now it will come as no surprise to know that Jonas finds out things he wishes he hadn’t and then wants to change his society for the better. They have no war, no violence, no crime but they also can’t see in colour, don’t experience joy, happiness or love. They do laugh a fair bit and enjoy themselves on some level and seem relatively happy but it’s unclear why that would be the case with no emotion. I suppose you just have to assume people wouldn’t be dull automatons if we actually did that.

You can guess the ending pretty easily but if you’re hoping for either a great resolution or a follow up film to see what happens next, you aren’t going to get it. I think that’s where the film really lost me. If it had some drama in the third act, some idea of what the consequences of Jonas’ actions were. Did everything work out? Did he make his world better or worse? If so why? Nope, none of that.

Should you buy it?

Absolutely not. With one exception, are you watching it as an adult or buying it for a young teenager whose not able to read Asimov or Heinlein for some unknown reason? If you can’t mature your kid onto proper sci-fi for people who can, you know, read and you just want something bland and inoffensive to divert them for a couple of hours go right ahead. Because that’s what this film is, just entirely bland.

For pities sake though if you go the Asimov route get Bicentennial Man not I, Robot (the films that is – everything he wrote is awesome). The later film took a giant, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull-sized dump on the book for no good reason.