Editor's Note: We welcome Bridgeport High School junior and journalism student Jeff McCullough to the Connect-Bridgeport blogging community. Jeff will be providing us with a weekly movie review; this week, he focuses on "The Giver." 

 

Now that the age of sparkling vampires has mercifully come to an end, a new genre to excite tweenage girls everywhere has to claim its place, and for a while now it’s been dystopia. As opposed to an optimistic glance at the future, dystopia shows an ugly side, filled with governments that watch and control all, pictures of ruined earth, and above all else, a sense of misery and barely concealed despair. The genre has been around for well over 100 years, but it’s only after the craze that was The Hunger Games that it really picked off with the teenie boppers.

 

 Since The Hunger Games 2011 release, a huge glut of films based off dystopian novels, both new and old, have crowded the market. The Giver is the most recent, an adaptation of a book from the distant past of 1993. Unfortunately, despite sticking to the book for most of its short 97 minutes length, TheGiver screams of unoriginality, failing to stand out in an increasingly competitive market.

               

The Giver’s biggest strength is its basic story. It’s a classic book for a reason, and the films dedication to its source material, at least its context, is admirable. It’s not the most original premise, but it is told in a (fairly) original way.

 

The story focuses on Jonas, a kid in a community of others who is on the verge of adulthood. The community follows that path of sameness, where everyone is equal in every way. It’s a community without pain, sorrow, or loss, but also one without joy, nurturing, or affection of any kind. 

Everything changes for Jonas however when he is selected to become the receiver of memories, the only individual to retain knowledge of the past and the hardship, love, and suffering it contained. He goes to The Giver to receive these memories and through him begins to form a bond and to experience what it is like to be truly free for the first time. However, as Jonas becomes more aware and curious, sinister forces controlling the community begin to become wary, and some of the evils in this “utopian” society begin to show themselves.

 

               

Editor's Note: Jeff McCullough is a Bridgeport High School junior and journalism student, who will be providing Connect-Bridgeport with a weekly movie review. This week's inaugural blog reviews "The Giver." 

 

Despite an interesting idea, and a for the most part, well-executed story, one thing The Giver can’t escape is the feeling of déjà vu. Ironically, in a story about individuality, The Giver can’t manage to find its own tone.  It has the classing system from Divergent, the airships from The Hunger Games, and the destroyed landscape that seems to be in every one of these movies. And because I’m sure some of you are currently sharpening your pitchforks, yes, I am aware that The Giver came out years before most other books everyone’s currently going crazy about were even thought bubbles in their author’s heads.

               

However, the film and the novel are separate entities, and the movie at times looks like it lifted entire scenes from the films that preceded it. Many of these scenes were either underplayed in the book, or absent completely. I get the feeling many of them were shot just to show off in the trailer in order to get Divergent fans to flock to the theater. And perhaps worst of all a love triangle, just like the ones in The Hunger Games, and, as much as I hate to admit it, Twilight, contains. Not one of these dopey, movie slowing scenes is in the book.  It’s a shame that a novel all about overcoming sameness was warped into a film that, well, feels the same as the movies that came before it.

               

Ultimately, The Giver is an ok movie, one I’m sure all the 12-year-old girls will love, and unlike Twilight, one that won’t make their boyfriends want to claw out their eyes.  But it fails as an adaption, with too many scenes of padding, designed to do nothing but try and draw the teenage audience into the theater. While I understand that changes have to be made, taking a book about diversity and originality, and changing it into a cookie cutter film for the most recent craze is almost inexcusable.

 

I don’t regret my time watching The Giver and I’m sure it’ll gross millions and be a smash with the most recent batch of middle schoolers. What I hope though, is that these kids that watch the film will decide to pick up the book. I know reading isn’t the cool thing to do anymore, but when your only other option for hearing this amazing story is watching the bland as butter film adaption, I don’t think it really seems so bad.