“The Giver” was ahead of its time as a book. But as a movie, it’s too late. 
 
 Published in 1993, Lois Lowry’s young-adult novel was a deeply felt, kid-centered dystopian fantasy. Its world of children learning what their “perfect” society had lost was both archetypal yet new. 
 
 But on screen, 21 years later, “The Giver” will feel too familiar after two editions of “The Hunger Games,” as well as “Ender’s Game” and “Divergent” — plus “The Maze Runner” and the third “Hunger Games” coming later this year. 
 
 As a result, “The Giver” is a bland also-ran in a world it helped create. 
 
 The story is set in our distant future. To avoid war, humans built solitary communities that follow restrictive but polite rules. “Sameness” is crucial (art, love and animals are not). 
 
 “Parental units” can apply for one boy and one girl. At 18, after being watched their whole lives by omnipresent elders and their leader (Meryl Streep), kids are assigned a job for life. (The elderly have an annual ceremony of being “released to Elsewhere,” a euphemism for death.) 
 
 Jonas (Brenton Thwaites) is chosen to be the community’s new Receiver — the one person allowed to have books, and the person designated to receive all the memories of what the world was like before the antiseptic civility. To learn it, Jonas becomes the apprentice to the Giver (Jeff Bridges), the elder who possesses all the world’s collective memories. Jonas is chosen because he sees things differently, like the red hair of Fiona (Odeya Rush), a girl he likes. 
 
 Brenton Thwaites and Odeya Rush exist in a conformist society in ‘The Giver.’ (David Bloomer) Jeff Bridges and Taylor Swift in ‘The Giver’ (David Bloomer) Katie Holmes and Alexander Skarsgard in ‘The Giver’ (David Bloomer) Jeff Bridges mentors Brenton Thwaites in ‘The Giver.’ (twc) 
 
 The Giver shares with Jonas memories of snow and rainbows, of dissent and bravery, of cruelty and war and love. When Jonas wants to tell his friends about how the world used to be — and save a newborn boy from being killed — he makes his first real choice. 
 
 Director Philip Noyce’s decision to (mostly) avoid the slam-bang action scenes or banal romance of other blockbusters is laudable. Through Bridges’ gruff but appealing guidance, young audiences may become aware of touchstones — Nelson Mandela, for example, or Tiananmen Square, both of which are glimpsed in the Giver’s memory — that they might normally have tuned out. 
 
 But that doesn’t mean the film works as it should. The “Brave New World”/“Logan’s Run” society it depicts seems to have influenced the acting, most notably of Katie Holmes, who we can guess was channeling memories of Scientology to play Jonas’ dutiful mother. 
 
 Streep, meanwhile is an angry matriarch figure, but she’s wasted in an underwritten role. Taylor Swift pops up in an unnecessary cameo as a previous Receiver who didn’t work out. 
 
 Like the character of the Giver, this is the elder YA tale the others learned from. Too bad the movie is less than the sum of its parts. 
 
 jneumaier@nydailynews.com 
 
 Sign up for BREAKING NEWS Emails privacy policy Thanks for subscribing! ||||| “The Giver” brings to life Lois Lowry’s 1993 novel about a dystopian community. And, according to the Post's Ann Hornaday, if you liked the book, you'll like the movie adaptation. (Jayne W. Orenstein/The Washington Post) 
 
 “The Giver” brings to life Lois Lowry’s 1993 novel about a dystopian community. And, according to the Post's Ann Hornaday, if you liked the book, you'll like the movie adaptation. (Jayne W. Orenstein/The Washington Post) 
 
 “The Giver,” an adaptation of Lois Lowry’s Newbery Medal-winning young adult novel, may seem like it’s riding on the coattails of such dystopian action hits as “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent.” But in reality, Lowry’s book may qualify as the ur-text of the form, a slim, futuristic allegory that, since it was published in 1993, has sold more than 10 million copies. 
 
 In its own way, the movie version — handsomely directed by Phillip Noyce and featuring an appealing, sure-footed cast of emerging and veteran actors — aptly reflects “The Giver’s” pride of place as the one that started it all, or at least the latest wave. Ironically, it wasn’t until its imitators became box office bonanzas that “The Giver” was seen potentially profitable enough to produce for the big screen. Far less noisy and graphically violent than those films, this mournful coming-of-age tale feels like their more subdued and introspective older sibling, even as it trafficks in the self-dramatizing emotionalism and simplistic philosophizing that are so recognizably symptomatic of the YA genre. 
 
 Set in an indeterminate future long after a vaguely drawn catastrophe called The Ruin, “The Giver” chronicles the story of Jonas (Brenton Thwaites), a teenager who has grown up in the Communities, where the all-seeing, all-hearing Council of Elders controls everything from domestic arrangements and careers to climate and sexual “stirrings,” which are carefully regulated by way of daily morning injections. 
 
 Jonas’s world, which he navigates with his best friends, Fiona (the stunning Israeli actress Odeya Rush) and Asher (Cameron Monaghan), is one in which all conflict, hatred and distinction has been erased by cultural values of conformity and obedience. This is a literally color-blind society, its black-and-white contours reflecting not only the Elders’ monotonously authoritarian sensibility, but Lowry’s own conveniently Manichean imagination, in which emotions and empiricism are at constant zero-sum odds. 
 
 As “The Giver” begins, Jonas and his contemporaries are about to find out what jobs they’ve been assigned by the chief Elder, played by Meryl Streep in a long gray wig that recalls Holly Hunter’s blunt-spoken separatist leader in the series “Top of the Lake.” It turns out that Jonas — who, unlike his friends and family, is able to see color — has been chosen to be a Receiver of Memory, meaning that he will soon learn all that happened before the world became the reassuringly predictable and consistent bubble in which he grew up. 
 
 Jeff Bridges and Brenton Thwaites in “The Giver,” an adaptation of the young adult novel by Lois Lowry. (The Weinstein Company) 
 
 His guide in this endeavor is the title character of “The Giver,” a bearded sage living in an isolated mountaintop aerie played with shamanic gruffness by Jeff Bridges. As it happens, Bridges himself was the prime engine in getting “The Giver” made after a decades-long struggle, during which he intended that his father, Lloyd, play the part he ultimately took as his own. That commitment and seriousness of purpose suffuse a production that will surely please the millions of people who read “The Giver” in middle school, and for whom it became much more than a good book and more like a potent talisman of their own emerging notions of individuation, moral choice and transcendent self-sacrifice. 
 
 Although Jonas is only 12 in the book, in the filmed version of “The Giver” he is 16 — and played by an Australian in his mid-20s, a digression from novelistic detail that has already sent Lowry’s partisans into howls of how-dare-they distress. But Thwaites, who was recently seen as a handsome prince in “Maleficent,” acquits himself well in a role that makes the most of his sober, Gary Cooper-esque good looks. Filmed in silvery tones of black and white, “The Giver” gradually gives way to a color scheme that is lurid or muted, depending on what experiences Jonas is accessing with the help of his grizzled mentor. 
 
 Although those memories will eventually send him on a genuine physical ad­ven­ture, replete with a shattering revelation and high-stakes drone chase, most of the film traces a young man’s dawning awareness that, the ease and peacefulness of his world notwithstanding, there’s something frighteningly toxic at its core. (One quibble with “The Giver” is that, at a sleek hour-and-a-half, some of its most dramatically ripe scenes play too quickly and perfunctorily to convey the impact they’re having on Jonas; no sooner has he witnessed an unspeakable horror than it swiftly disappears, filed away in his burgeoning internal archive.) 
 
 Like its fellow YA movies — which with the current juggernaut of comic-book adaptations represent the dominant culture in Hollywood — “The Giver” perceptively caters to its teenaged fans’ own cardinal desires and anxieties. Messy feelings, youthful curiosity and unruly physical impulses are valorized and elevated, in sharp contrast to the Elders’ Stalinistic attempts at social control. As a Receiver of Memory, and in one of the film’s most obvious nods to teenaged wish fulfillment, Jonas is given permission to ask questions, no matter how rude, and to lie — and he never has to apologize. 
 
 Meanwhile, what he hears from parents and other authority figures is portrayed as the stuff of dehumanizing soul-murder. “Precision of language!” Jonas’s mother scolds him when he shares his feelings one night over dinner. Mom, by the way, is played by Katie Holmes in a suitably chilly performance as a rule-obsessed judge, intimations of the actress’s own recent brush with Scientology hovering over her scenes like a teasing, troubling mist. 
 
 Jonas’s father, equally skillfully portrayed by Alexander Skarsgard, features prominently in “The Giver’s” most disturbing sequence, in which Jonas witnesses one of the grisly realities beneath the anodyne double-speak that he’s now beginning to question. 
 
 That double-speak, of course, recalls George Orwell at his most anti-totalitarian, as well as Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” which may be “The Giver’s” most direct ancestor. Like “The Fault in Our Stars” earlier this summer, young people have once again been given their generation’s version of a message that, although not necessarily new, nevertheless may feel urgent and uniquely timely to its core audience. “The Giver” has been made with deep respect for that experience, and for the book that so powerfully predicted the grim universe movie teenagers now inhabit — for worse and, in this case, for better as well. 
 
 ★ ★ ★ 
 
 PG-13. At area theaters. Contains a mature thematic image and some sci-fi action/violence. 94 minutes. ||||| 2 out of 4 stars Written by Michael Mitnick and Robert B. Weide Directed by Phillip Noyce Starring Brenton Thwaites, Meryl Streep and Jeff Bridges Classification PG Country USA Language English Year 2014 
 
 Another week, another movie about a special adolescent who saves society from the forces of darkness. Lois Lowry's popular 1993 novel, The Giver, was a trendsetter in the juvenile dystopia genre, but 21 years later, in the wake of The Hunger Games, Divergent and The Lego Movie, another movie about a kid rebelling against socially imposed "sameness" is a case of the same old, same old. 
 
 Lowry's slender 180-page book, which spawned three sequels, offered a middle-school readership the grim pleasures of the totalitarian fictions of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Ray Bradbury, and the novel became a curriculum favourite. The Giver was also frequently banished from reading lists by conservative parents' groups who objected to material they considered too mature and ethically ambiguous. The movie version, adapted by screenwriters Michael Mitnick and Robert Weide, puts those concerns to rest. 
 
 The novel's 12-year-old protagonist, Jonas, is now a teenager (played by poster-boy-handsome 25-year-old Australian actor Brenton Thwaites), and the movie's conclusion has all the ambiguity of a sparkly Christmas card. 
 
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 Jonas lives in a closed community on a cloud-ringed plain, surrounded by the off-limits "Elsewhere." Books, music, weather, even memories and colour, have somehow been stripped from daily life. The first half-hour is shot in flat black and white, with elements of colour leaking into the frames gradually, as Jonas's consciousness expands. In Gary Ross's 1998 film Pleasantville, that technique was mischievously charming; here it's a blunt metaphor. 
 
 The community where Jonas lives resembles a well-regulated campus or gated resort, with boxy modern houses, fountains and manicured lawns. He lives with his assigned family unit, a mild-mannered father (Alexander Skarsgard), tensely proper mother (Katie Holmes) and little sister Lily (Emma Tremblay). They share "feelings" every night, and begin each day with an injection to maintain "sameness." Each year, the big event is a ceremony where the Chief Elder (Meryl Streep, looking like an aging hippie in long hair and bangs) assigns a new group of graduates their life work. Jonas's friend Asher (Cameron Monaghan) becomes a pilot, while the pretty girl, Fiona (Odeya Rush), will become a caregiver. 
 
 Jonas has a special role: He will become the Receiver, the sole member of his generation allowed to know the group's collective history, and to offer advice to the elders' council. For his training, he goes to the edge of the known world and meets the Giver, an old man in a cottage played by Jeff Bridges, speaking in orotund tones. Bridges, who spent 18 years trying to get this film made (he originally intended his role to be played by his late father, Lloyd Bridges), brings a world-weary crackpot charisma to the part, but he can't really rescue a film that's undermined by self-righteous gaucheness. The Giver's interactions with Jonas set off all kinds of unintended alarm bells: intimate contact, wrist-grabbing, talk of pain, secrecy and giving and receiving. 
 
 If their data-transmitting encounters eventually prove to be benign, they're also banal, as Lowry's serious but simplified ideas get reduced to a barrage of visual kitsch. Some images are innocuous (a sleigh ride, folk dancing) but the memory flashes graduate to a reel of world events (Vietnam, Berlin Wall, Tiananmen Square) that feels like a parody of a CNN promo. 
 
 As Jonas learns about the joys and horrors of the past, he also has his eyes opened to the falseness of the world he lives in, a loveless system where unwanted babies and old people are euphemistically "released" (it sounds like a Tea Party paranoid fantasy of Obamacare). Eventually, in the film's third act, director Phillip Noyce gets a chance to show off his action chops with a chase scene across wild terrain involving fancy drone airplanes, cross-cutting dramatic scenes of Jonas's escape with violent events on the home front. In the process, the movie jettisons the eerie uncertainty of Lowry's novel, which ended where an adolescent story should – at the edge of the unknown. ||||| CLOSE 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. 
 
 Philip Noyce's film, based on the much-loved Lois Lowry young-adult novel, boasts a good cast but falls flat on the screen. 
 
 Brenton Thwaites in a scene from “The Giver.” (Photo: On Screen Entertainment) Story Highlights Critic's review: 2 stars 
 
 The cast is game but given little to do. 
 
 It's not a bad movie, just one that falls flat. 
 
 In a crowd of young-adult works about dystopian futures, the film doesn't stand out. 
 
 The future doesn't look bright. 
 
 Not if you judge by movies based on young-adult novels, anyway. Whether it's "The Hunger Games" or "Divergent" or now "The Giver," one would surmise that we are heading toward a dystopian future in which various of our freedoms will be curtailed or taken away completely. It'll be up to a teenager to save the day, or at least bridge the gap between sequels. 
 
 "The Giver," a rather lackluster, too-obvious effort, is no different in any of those regards. Based on the much-loved, oft-taught book by Lois Lowry, director Phillip Noyce's film is set in a near future that would seem to be a utopia. There is no pain, no war, no class distinction. Everything is black and white. No joke; the scenes at the beginning of the film are monochrome. 
 
 Of course, there is also no freedom of choice, or freedom of anything, really. No love, no romance, no hugging and kissing. Makes you wonder where all the people come from. Everyone dresses in the same drab, white outfits. All the kids ride the same kind of clunky, white, one-speed bicycles. (Hills seem to have been removed from the equation.) Mention words like "love" and you get smacked down with a "precision of language!" admonition. 
 
 Brenton Thwaities and Odeya Rush star in a scene from “The Giver.” (Photo: On Screen Entertainment) 
 
 Once a year there is a ceremony in which all of the kids who are becoming adults are assigned jobs by the Chief Elder (Meryl Streep, no less). They have no say in the matter, of course; it's all decided for them by the Elders. Jonas (Brenton Thwaites) awaits anxiously as his friends Fiona (Odeya Rush) and Asher (Cameron Monaghan) are given their jobs. 
 
 Jonas won't get one. He is chosen to be the Receiver of Memory. He alone will know man's real history, with all of its ugliness and — duh — beauty, and will use this wisdom to help the Elders run the place. The current Receiver (Jeff Bridges) thus becomes the Giver; during sessions at his bunker-like library (the only books left in society are housed here), he passes everything, good and bad, to Jonas. 
 
 These scenes are among the film's strongest. It's a crash course in what a 15-year-old would probably string together as history's most important events, along with life's experiences. Flowers bloom, people die. They could have said "circle of life" and been done with it, but Disney would doubtless protest. 
 
 Whatever the case, the visual mash-up as Jonas receives the information (by clasping hands with the Giver) is exciting, if somewhat rushed. (There's a lot of history to cover, if you're going for all of mankind.) 
 
 Jonas begins to see in color, and to realize that maybe this seemingly perfect society isn't so perfect after all. What transpires deviates from the book but surprise anyone who has seen this type of movie before (and, given the glut of them, that group probably includes ... I don't know, every girl 16 and younger, probably). 
 
 Jeff Bridges and Brenton Thwaities star in a scene from “The Giver.” (Photo: On Screen Entertainment) 
 
 The cast is good but not given much to do in terms of real acting. Alexander Skarsgard is so muted as Jonas' father, for instance, that he's practically somnambulant. Katie Holmes, as Jonas' super-strict mother, meanwhile, is ... well, Katie Holmes. 
 
 This isn't a terrible movie. It just falls flat, in almost every way. It exists and not much else. 
 
 It's all too predictable, and way too heavy-handed. Movies like this don't trust their audience enough, as opposed to, say, "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" or "The Spectacular Now," two young-adult films based on books that let their audiences discover what they're trying to say, instead of hitting them over the head with it. 
 
 For "The Giver," you might as well wear a helmet. 
 
 Review: 'The Giver,' 2 stars 
 
 Director: Philip Noyce. 
 
 Cast: Brenton Thwaites, Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep. 
 
 Rating: PG-13 for a mature thematic image and some sci-fi action/violence. 
 
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– Excited to head back to your school reading days with the new flick The Giver? You may not be after reading what the critics have to say. Despite big names like Meryl Streep and Jeff Bridges, the film adaptation of Lois Lowry's classic 1993 novel has just a 29% approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Here's why: "Another week, another movie about a special adolescent who saves society from the forces of darkness," writes Liam Lacey at the Globe and Mail. The Giver is too much of "the same old, same old" in which "Lowry’s serious but simplified ideas get reduced to a barrage of visual kitsch." "The Giver was ahead of its time as a book. But as a movie, it’s too late," writes Joe Neumaier at the New York Daily News. He's one of several critics to note the similarity to recent flicks like The Hunger Games and Divergent. He acknowledges, however, "young audiences may become aware of touchstones" like Nelson Mandela or Tiananmen Square "that they might normally have tuned out." Oh, and Taylor Swift appears in "an unnecessary cameo." "The cast is good" and there are strong scenes when the Giver, played by Bridges, passes his knowledge on to Receiver Jonas, played by Brenton Thwaites. But the movie "just falls flat, in almost every way. It exists and not much else," writes Bill Goodykoontz at the Arizona Republic. "It's all too predictable, and way too heavy-handed." Ann Hornaday at the Washington Post apparently didn't get the memo. Lowry's novel "comes to life," she writes. It's "handsomely directed" with "an appealing, sure-footed cast," including strong performances from Alexander Skarsgard and Katie Holmes, who play Jonas' parents. Overall, it "perceptively caters to its teenaged fans' own cardinal desires and anxieties," she writes.