Disclaimer: Spoilers
I think everyone in the small country known as America was forced to read 1994 book "The Giver" by Lois Lowery. Unlike most of my classmates I actually liked the book. And like people who liked the book I was not looking forward to the movie because the trailers made it look like a botched version of it. Now I am getting it out of the way now in saying that overall I liked the movie but at the same time this is not the best movie to come out this year but it's certainly not the book. And while most of my problems due involve the third act which is new it's not because it diverges from the book and I have no problems with most of the changes made to the movie adaptation. This movie isn't a piece of shit like you've been hearing and doesn't deserve the 32% on rotten tomatoes, overall this is half of a good movie which is why it's painful that the other half is pretty bad.
I will however have to compare this movie to the book because when you have an adaptation that you've actually read you can't not do that.
First the good, probably the best part of this movie is the visuals and how cleverly they use them. It's a gorgeous movie and has great cinematography. They use of black and white in the beginning is very clever along with the fact of how they slowly return the color as the movie goes on and when they drop it when Jonas leaves the community. Another plus and this is mostly on me is that there was a lot of passion thrown into this movie you could tell that the people making this movie really wanted to make a good movie (which is kind of sad I think this is only half a good movie.) Jeff Bridges has been trying to make this movie for years and I hope he likes it. A problem I had with one-hundred foot journey is that there was no passion behind, so this movie does get bonus points for that at least.
A lot of other critics who don't like this movie says that it completely misses the point of the source material and I don't think that is the case. I think this is overall a well written movie that understands it's material. I think it's more of something else that makes the movie go down a lot of pegs.
Now for the bad. The movie is horrendously acted, in the movie they play it very robotic and dead and while at first it didn't bother me because this was before Jonas was given memories from the giver, after the point Jonas starts skipping his injections I started to realize the acting problem. First let me start with the guy who plays Jonas, Brendan Thwaites, the dude while cute can't act for shit. I've seen him in supporting roles in other movies where he was fine but as the lead he can't carry a movie. This is a prime example of actors who while good in supporting roles can't transition to leading actors.
I know Jeff Bridges is an academy award winning actor and he is super likable in all of the things I've seen him in he hasn't really shown any range. And when he speaks of stuff like love and compassion it never translates to his facial expressions, in fact for any actor (except Meryl Streep) all the things they speak of never transitions to their faces. The whole thing was all the people were substance less in the book but they weren't dead inside. So I never felt any emotional connection for anyone in this movie except for Meryl Streep who was playing an emotionally stunted person but still showed the pain of that.
I think the reason a lot of the substance isn't there is because the acting isn't there. And it's not because of direction it's the actors themselves (Alexander Skarsgard and Katie Holmes are two of the best examples, they are likable in movies but neither are strong actors to do these types of roles.)
Also Brendan Thwaites and Odeya Rush (who can't act at all) who plays Fiona have no chemistry and you never get why he loves her except for maybe he wants to have sex with her. Brandan Thwaites has technically more chemistry with Jeff Brides (Giver and Receiver jokes hahaha.) Taylor Swift is also in this movie and when you just hear her voice for the first time it's cringe worthy.
Another bad part is the third act which is mostly action. Now I am not made because it diverges from the book, what gets me is that the first two thirds are so dialogue heavy that the last third which is really action heavy doesn't fit tonally with this movie and it's distracting, the third act really also shows the worst of the acting in this movie and pisses away a lot of the good will the first two acts built up for me.
I have a feeling the third act and romance were very much studio mandated to appeal to the teen demographic not realizing the reason this movie is bombing is because of the fact that the advertisement showed these two things off the most in the trailers and pissed a lot of people off.
All in all I give this a 5/10~ half a good movie that could have been way better if they had gotten different actors but it I still like due to the first two acts and the amount of passion thrown into this.
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