The Giver is dumb.

I don’t mean in the way that many movies based on YA books are dumb. I don’t even mean in the way that movies full of shopworn dystopian tropes can be dumb. (Dystropia? Did I just invent that?)

I mean it’s the kind of dumb that holds its audience in contempt – the kind of dumb that believes it has something smart to say. I assure you, it does not. I won’t comment on the source material because I haven’t read it, but it almost has to be less pedantic and empty-headed.

In the future, something terrible happens. The survivors must rebuild. In a move that will surprise no one, they build with a hamfisted utopian (authoritopian?) vision aimed at reducing human conflict, and end up making life safe but not fun, equal but not exciting. It’s not explicitly stated in the film, but I suspect the plans for this paradise were compiled via a PERL script that munges together plot devices and visual gimmicks from other, better stories.

Meryl Streep and Jeff Bridges are in this movie. Not speaking dialogue worthy of them, of course, but present and trading cred for back end points. Katie Holmes and the Viking vampire from True Blood also bring their B games to the party.

In closing, a partial list of the stories tossed into the grinder to produce ‘The Giver’.

Pleasantville, Atlas Shrugged, Brave New World, Harrison Bergeron, The Village, The Bible, The Island, Logan’s Run, Divergent, 1984, Citizen Kane.