Before I dissect this movie for all that it is worth, I would like to adequately rename it from The Giver to The Taker. Since it took two hours of my life away. The movie opens up in a dystopia where practically everything is controlled by you guessed it, the government. Food? Check. Your partner? Check. Colors! Check. In this world, the government has literally genetically modified the population to only see black and white. That is, until our main character Jonas comes around. Jonas isn’t like every other child in the community and is ‘assigned’ to be the next receiver of memory. The conflict comes through the battle he faces both physically and mentally with this difficult job. With an all-star cast lineup that includes Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Katie Holmes, Brenton Thwaites, and even Taylor Swift, you would think that this film would do the it’s book counterpart justice. This is not the fact, and as an avid fan of “The Giver,” I was heartbroken to find out that the movie was a piece of trash.

Now, you probably think to yourself that I’m being a little harsh right now and that a movie could never stack up against its book counterpart. And while I do believe that books are generally better than there movies, this example is especially terrible for quite a few reasons. The first being that they changed way to much of the book. How am I supposed to enjoy seeing Brenton Thwaites play a twelve year old that’s going through puberty. The guy is twenty-five years old and you expect me to believe he’s twelve? He’s bigger than me and I’m eighteen. To me, changing the age of the character is unacceptable because it ruins the dynamic of the movie. No longer do we see the frustrations of a boy that has everything going against him, including puberty. We see this devilishly handsome ‘man’ dealing with his problems, and no one wants to see that. Secondly, they made a few altercations to certain scenes that didn’t make much sense. By this I mean they made Jonas and Fiona kiss. While the director may think that this is a cutesy scene, it makes absolutely no sense. I’d have a better chance of seeing Jonas give his best friend a left hook to the face than seeing two teens lip smacking in the town square. What’s that you say? Jonas did punch his friend in the face? Of course, they changed that one to. Because we all know that lifelong relationships with those that we can trust are absolutely worthless in times of need. They totally couldn’t have just talked it out and had Jonas on his merry way. Nope, he had to deck his best friend, who ended up saving him mind you. Overall, with a script so different than the book, this movie was doomed to fail from the beginning.

The second unforgivable sin that this movie commits is butchering the ending. I won’t lie; I hated the ending of the book with a passion. But its movies like this that make me thankful that this book had an extremely ambiguous ending that still has me thinking today. The director holding your hand through a very simplified version of a thought provoking ending is no way to do a book justice. Did Jonas die? No. But what happened at the community? They were enlightened. Oh. Killing the ending of the story and over explaining it removes all thoughtful analysis that the fans of the book love. Not to mention that what is built up in over 100 pages of climax is displayed in a mere thirty minutes. I understand that movies do have time as a limiting factor, but they really couldn’t have added an extra fifteen minutes for some plot development. I felt like I was watching a boxing match where they just tried to throw in every little detail that the fans loved and ended up just regurgitating out some B-list movie. All this being said, if you ever make a movie adaptation off of a book please heed my advice. Don’t. Screw. With. The. Ending.

Before I rip at this movie for another paragraph, I’d like to take the time to advise you not to see this movie if you’ve read the book. That being said, the visuals were awesome and the technology in this society matches perfectly with what one is to expect out of the book’s society. This however, does not make up for the fact that the rest of the movie is comparable to endlessly stubbing your toe against the coffee table; painful to watch. I don’t see this movie winning any awards and if it does I’ll probably write another rant on how the film industry isn’t what it used to be. But that’s for another essay. Any information that you’re looking for about this murder case can be found online where many other reviewers share my opinion. If I could give The Taker a grade lower than an F, I would in a heartbeat. But since this is Hollywood after all, I’m sure some paid off reviewers will balance out the real ones. I’ll leave you with one final thought. Movies that are based off of books face the unique challenge of pleasing a crowd that’s already enjoyed the story told. But that is absolutely no excuse to ‘give’ the audience this garbage film that couldn’t even stack up to the Scary Movie saga. And you never want to be compared to Scary Movie.