the giver movie review for parents

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The Giver Parent Guide

Featuring solid performances and intriguing art design, "the giver" has a lot to offer those willing to thoughtfully receive..

When Jonas (Brenton Thwaites) is chosen to succeed the "Giver" in his community, he is mentored for the job by the present man of wisdom (Jeff Bridges). From the elder the teen receives some startling secrets about the utopian society in which they live.

Release date August 15, 2014

Run Time: 94 minutes

Official Movie Site

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The guide to our grades, parent movie review by donna gustafson.

What would you give for world peace? With conflicts regularly breaking out in various places around the globe, this question is one each of us has likely contemplated.

But such is not the case for the residents of The Community. They live in a utopian environment achieved by eliminating diversity, making their communications precise, prohibiting lying, and administering a daily injection to each individual to insure the health of all. Overseen by the Elders, every person’s life is regulated from his or her birth and placement into a family unit, to their childhood education, assignment to a job, and eventual departure to “elsewhere” in their old age. The society runs so perfectly that no one even thinks to ask what have they given for world peace.

Jonas (Brenton Thwaites), a resident of The Community, is about to graduate to adulthood. At the annual ceremony where the career placements are made, the presiding Elder (Meryl Streep) withholds his pronouncement until the end. To the surprise of everyone, instead of being a drone pilot or a nurturer like his friends Asher and Fiona (Cameron Monaghan and Odeya Rush), Jonas is selected to be the next “Receiver of Memory”.

Although this is a great honor, Jonas is entirely unsure of what this titled role entails until his training with The Giver begins. The old man, whose position Jonas will one day assume, explains that he is the keeper of memories from the past. The knowledge he possesses about a time before The Community was formed allows him to council the Elders when they face problems beyond their present experience. The wise man will share this information with the young apprentice by clasping his hands, then transferring images and experiences right into Jonas’s mind.

Despite his deliberate upbringing, nothing has prepared Jonas for the explosion of thoughts and feelings that the Giver asks him to receive. Introduced to joy, happiness and love, it doesn’t take long for him to catch a glimpse of what his mentor means when he says there is so much more to the world than what life in The Community offers. Yet as he comes to understand pain, sorrow and loss too, he starts to sympathize with why The Elders are trying to protect the citizens. It isn’t until Jonas begins to question the costs incurred by his society in order to maintain the benefit of a peaceful existence that he recognizes he may have to use his own judgment to decide if things should change.

Based on a popular young adult novel by Lois Lowery, The Giver also presents the viewer with this age-old conundrum: Which is better? World peace without individual choice, or individual choice that will almost certainly lead to a world without peace?

In presenting the argument, the movie includes montages of news footage showing some of Earth’s most triumphant and disappointing moments (like the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tank Man in Tiananmen Square ). Portrayals of playful snow sledding is juxtaposed with the brutality of war (soldiers being shot and killed are shown), and the beauty of a sunset with the ugliness of greed (an elephant is killed by poachers for the value of its tusks). The story imagines as well the kinds of methods that might be needed to keep a population completely under control. It depicts invasions of privacy (like all-seeing security cameras) and lethal injections (for euthanasia, infanticide and execution).

This content, along the mature themes, make this film a poor choice for young viewers. But it is a strong contender for raising important discussion topics with older children and teens. Featuring solid performances and intriguing art design, The Giver has a lot to offer those willing to thoughtfully receive.

About author

Donna Gustafson

The giver rating & content info.

Why is The Giver rated PG-13? The Giver is rated PG-13 by the MPAA for a mature thematic image and some sci-fi action/violence.

Violence: Soldiers on the battlefield are afraid. They shoot and kill one another (Gun shots and hits are shown, but no blood). Some die. Poachers shoot an elephant for its ivory. The animal’s body is struck with bullets and he stumbles and falls. Real news footage is shown of various world conflicts, protests and disasters. Lethal injections are given to infants, the elderly and the disobedient (these are both discussed and shown). A character is chased by law enforcers, and electrocuted with a weapon. A teen and child are dropped from a height into a turbulent river. Characters struggle to survive against the elements.

Sexual Content: A teen couple holds each other’s hands and kiss on a couple of occasions. Body chances during puberty are alluded to.

Language: None noted.

Alcohol / Drug Use: None noted.

Page last updated July 17, 2017

The Giver Parents' Guide

The Community focuses on what is best for the many, even if that means sacrificing what is best for the few. What are the pros and cons of that philosophy? Can you think of any other ways to achieve harmony and peace?

One of the Elders states, “When people have the power to choose, they choose wrong.” Do you agree with her observation? Are all of the people in The Community unable to make choices? Or are some of them empowered to make decisions, not only for themselves, but also for others? How does the government of The Community compare with some real life philosophies for governing counties, organizations or families?

The Elders of The Community act like the gods of their world. Are they being benevolent by protecting the many citizens from the harm that could be caused by the few? Or does their control prevent the people from really living? How might the scenario presented in this story answer a question sometimes asked by people in the real word: “If there is a God, why does he let bad things happen to good people?”

Is it possible to understand joy if you don’t also understand pain? What other emotions or experiences require us to be familiar with their opposite sides in order to be really appreciated? Would being protected from negative things help or hamper your decision-making?

The Giver tells Jonas that because the people don’t understand some things, they aren’t responsible for their actions. Do you agree? How are knowledge and accountability connected? Can ignorance always be used as an excuse?

This movie is based on a novel by Lois Lowry . It has been adapted into a screenplay by Michael Mitnick .

The most recent home video release of The Giver movie is November 25, 2014. Here are some details…

Related home video titles:.

Other youths find themselves assigned to a future destiny by the societies in which they live in the movies City of Ember , The Hunger Games and Divergent .

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The Giver | 2014 | PG-13 | - 2.4.1

SEX/NUDITY 2 - A teen boy kisses a teen girl and she says, "What was that?" and she becomes frightened and walks away. A teen boy looks out his window and admires a teen girl in a window across the way, brushing her hair; he later dreams of himself and the girl kissing briefly in the woods after attending a wedding. A teen girl refuses to go away from home with a teen boy, but kisses him goodbye. ►  People of all ages are not permitted by the rules of the world to touch anyone outside their own nuclear family unit and they are not allowed to kiss or hug family unit members. Couples apparently do not have sex, but it is unclear how the women become pregnant, other than the government assigning them to this career; women and men are chosen to work as nurturers, caring for the babies, whom the birth mothers never see again and nurturing center staff deliver babies to the doors of chosen "family units" on assignment. The world government requires its communities to be asexual, but to adhere to strictly assigned biological-male and biological-female clothing uniforms. ►  Footage plays in a slide show of pregnant women with huge bellies, lying clothed in hospital beds. A newborn baby is held in a gloved hand in close-up, its skin red and a little wet and the mother smiles in a hospital bed in the fuzzy background. ►  Elders of a community watch a tape of a teen boy and a teen girl kissing and an older woman asks, "What are they doing?" and a woman says that love leads to sex and murder, so emotions must be stopped. An assigned mother tells her children that the word "love" is antiquated and no longer applicable.

VIOLENCE/GORE 4 - A trance places a teen boy in the Vietnam war as a soldier beside other men and women fighters; a man riddles another man with an automatic rifle in a long shot and we see the body bounce around with the strikes; the man dies in the teen's arms with his eyes open and a large splotch of blood on his chest and the teen boy as a soldier uses his assault rifle to kill a woman enemy, who falls off screen and the boy wakes up calling out, "How can people do that?" ►  A teen girl and an elderly man sit in locked glass cubes before men take them to a chamber where the man is forced to watch the girl's execution by lethal injection in a chair like a dentist's chair; the girl says that she is afraid and a large bore needle moves toward her arm (it does not touch her). An old man is tased in his home with a stun club after people blast down his door. ►  We see film footage of a man as he injects the top of the head of one twin with an unknown drug that kills it, puts it into a plastic box, and throws it down a garbage chute, because two of the same child is one too many in this culture. Angry that that a newborn boy staying with his family unit will be "released" (i.e. killed), a teen boy kidnaps the baby from a nurturing center; three men on motor scooters carry stun clubs and follow him, and then chase a teen girl carrying an empty baby carrier. ►  A teen boy in a trance sees two male hunters shooting an elephant and killing it; it falls heavily to the ground after loud gunshots and the teen boy in the trance wakes up and cries as a man hugs him. A teen boy in a trance learns that the current world government did away with race, color, and religions and everyone is the same (white, Caucasian); other trances show him colorful weddings, festivals, religious ceremonies with lanterns of fire and prayers, people dancing in streets, 1960s-1970s American race riots, old people wearing oxygen masks and a man crowd-surfing at a concert; another trance shows the teen boy Nelson Mandela released from prison, women protesting in India, soldiers pointing rifles somewhere in the Middle East and a man blocking the progress of a tank in Tiananmen Square. ►  A teen boy steals a motor scooter, places a baby in its carrier on the front mounts and rides until the battery dies and he walks into the desert (we see wide heat waves move up the screen and the boy and baby become sunburned); a drone picks them up with a power beam and drops them into a rushing river, where they sink and rise to the top. A teen boy carrying a baby walks over large rocks and into snow-covered mountains, causing windburn to both their faces (his lips are cracked and bleeding a little and the baby has a red sore at the left corner of his mouth); the boy trips a little and the camera cuts to a view of the teen lying face down in the snow, with the baby crying beside him, but OK and the baby looks up and laughs at falling snow, waking the teen boy. ►  On a high plateau surrounded by a deep canyon, the remains of humanity after some disaster live in nameless communities while drones monitor the population at all times and a community-wide PA system warns them about breaking the rules of conformity and obedience and emotional displays are considered a sign of maladjustment. ►  A teen boy meets a man who lives in a dusty book-filled two-story room at the edge of a community and the boy hears that he will have pain and must be strong; in a dozen scenes, the man places his thumbs on the boy's wrists and puts him into a trance, receiving memories and emotions. A woman states that a teen boy must hold pain inside and not express it; she appears as a hologram in the boy's home and tells his mother that he may be becoming reckless. An older man tells a teen boy that his own daughter was a Receiver for two months and requested to be released (to die), because of the painful experiences of trances. A man says that he has seen children starve and men fight wars over unimportant things. ►  A memorial ceremony of home movies of a teen boy play in his former community, with a caption that he has gone to Elsewhere. A community releases its elderly in a yearly ceremony, an official saying that these people are going to Elsewhere, where they will live out pleasant lives. We hear that old people die via injections and unsatisfactory newborns are "released" daily in this manner. ►  A teen boy walks through a soccer game and Vietnam flashbacks upset him as his voiceover says that he used to play war with ball games as a kid, but war is real. A teen boy in a trance feels a bee sting and calls out "Ouch!" ►  A teen boy and a teen girl sit on serving trays and slide down the center metal strip between stairways on a large arch, landing unharmed in the grass below; the boy holds the girls hands and a PA system calls out that they are not to touch anyone outside the family unit. A teen boy in a trance experiences his first snow and rides a sled down a mountain to a large house in which people are singing Christmas Carols as he watches through a window. A teen boy touches smudges on a baby's wrists and shares colorful images of an elephant, a puppy, a laughing baby and parties. An elderly man plays piano for a teen boy who cries with emotion at his first hearing of music; at home, the boy dances with a younger sister and his mother sharply tells him to stop (music and dancing are forbidden). ►  In a trance, a zebra stands behind a baby zebra and the afterbirth drops from the larger zebra's rear to the ground.

LANGUAGE 1 - Name-calling (stupid, weird, gullible), stereotypical references to men, women, children, teenagers, senior citizens, premature babies, oppressive government officials, totalitarian governments, perpetual followers, 3 religious exclamations (Lord Please, This Was A Miracle, The hymn "Silent Night").

SUBSTANCE USE - Daily drug injections suppress all emotions and we see children pushing their wrists against an injection device on a wall of their homes, a teen girl receives an extra dose of an emotion suppression medication in a large hypodermic needle that we see inserted into her arm, we hear that a boy is never to take any other medications than a morning prescription, we see that a boy does not take any medication, and we hear that euthanasia occurs daily with injections and see a large bore needle stop above the skin of a teen girl's arm. A man pours a wine glass of bubbly white liquid that could be wine for himself and a glass of water for a teen boy and they both drink.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Totalitarian governments, mind control, government mandated drug use, emotions, childbirth, genocide, families, friendship, history, thinking for oneself, standing by one's convictions, rebellion, freedom.

MESSAGE - Learning from history and memories helps build a better world.

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated , Special , Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.

REVIEWS See ratings & reviews at Critics.com

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What parents should know about ‘The Giver’

This weekend’s big release, “The Giver” is the big-screen adaptation of the young adult novel from 1993. The book was written for a younger audience, but is the movie OK for the same group?

The big release this week is the big-screen adaptation of the young adult novel from 1993 “ The Giver .”

The movie tries to raise moral questions and place us in situations to ponder how we would act.

The book was written for a younger audience, and that’s the target for the film, but is it OK for them?

This movie is very tame in terms of sexiness, and when broken down it’s really next to none.

There are one or two moments of a teenage couple kissing, but that is about it. No talk of sex, no allusions to it, and even the romantic elements are few and far between.

In the category of sexiness, this movie should be appropriate for anyone.

There is a little violence in the film, but nothing blatant. The most obvious violence in the film comes in the form of a grainy flashback of war.There are real threats of violence, but not much is actually played out on screen.

When it comes to actual violence or gore, the film is more of a PG rating than a PG-13. Most animated adventures like “ How to Train Your Dragon” and “ Wreck-It Ralph ” have more violence than “The Giver.”

Like pretty much everything else on this list so far the coarse language is almost at zero.

As I think back, I can’t really come up with any rough language throughout the film. A main point of emphasis in the fictional community where our subjects live in “The Giver” is it’s very strict about using direct and clear language, so curse words and harsh language aren’t existent.

Again, the language would fall more into a PG realm.

Adult themes

With all of this, you may be wondering how “The Giver” got a PG-13. Well, my best guess is due to adult themes.

The themes discussed in the film range from free will, love, oppression and murder. The murder aspect can actually be very disturbing as it revolves around the elderly, youths and even newborns.

There are a couple of moments where these themes are in full display, and it can be truly disturbing. One scene in particular likely merited the PG-13 all on its own.

While these themes are played out on screen, to a point, it doesn’t really feel like violence or gore nearly as much as it is just disturbing.

This last point alone would make “The Giver” more appropriate for teenage audiences than for little ones.

Overall, “The Giver” is one of the more tame young adult adaptations to date. The movie should be appropriate for its target audience of teens, but your little ones will likely be bored in the film and have a tough time following what’s happening.

“The Giver” is rated PG-13 for a mature thematic image and some sci-fi action/violence.

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20 years ago, Lois Lowry's dystopian YA novel "The Giver" won the Newberry Medal. Creepy and prophetic, told in a kind of flat-affect voice, it has been a staple in middle-school literature curriculum ever since, introducing young students to sophisticated ethical and moral concepts that will help them recognize its precedents when they come to read the works of George Orwell or Aldous Huxley. Jeff Bridges has been attached as a producer to the film project for almost 20 years, and finally, "The Giver" is here, with Bridges in the title role. Directed by Phillip Noyce, with an adaptation of the book by Michael Mitnick , "The Giver" gives us the overall structure of Lowry's original work, adds a couple of understandable details like a sweet little romance and then derails into an action movie in its final sequence, complete with attacks from the air and a hi-tech command center. Children have been thrilled by the book for 20 years, and a chase scene still proved irresistible. Despite a truly pained performance from Jeff Bridges and a beautifully imagined, three-dimensional futuristic world, "The Giver," in wanting to connect itself to more recent YA franchises, sacrifices subtlety, inference and power.

"The Giver" takes place in a community at some point in the indeterminate future where "Sameness" is prized above all else. Multiple factors have gone into creating a monochromatic world (literally, colors have been erased) where individuality is crushed, a citizen's every move is monitored from the moment of birth, natural families have been replaced by artificial "family units" and choice has vanished. A soothing voice makes passive-aggressive scolding announcements over loudspeakers. The Giver's cavernous dwelling, perched on the edge of a cliff, is a gloomy and masterful set, overlooking the clouds gathered below, making The Giver appear like Citizen Kane, holed up in his mansion surrounded by accumulated possessions and raw pain.

"Precision of language" is enforced, and so people are constantly apologizing and saying "I accept your apology" to each other, but in a rote way that drains the language of meaning. "The Giver" is a cautionary tale about what happens when language is controlled and limited—ground well covered for all time in "1984"—where citizens have no language available to them outside of "newsspeak." Memories are gone, too, in "The Giver". One person in the Community is chosen to be "The Receiver" of a collective memory, memories of now-extinct experiences like love and war and sex and pain. Through the course of the film, the young Jonas ( Brenton Thwaites ), chosen to be the next Receiver, is introduced to complexity and emotion and his entire concept of the world as he knows it shatters. He must now make a choice: to stay or to flee. It's a powerful set-up, made even more stark by Noyce's choice to film the majority of the film in black-and-white. When Jonas starts to see colors again, there are unavoidable " Pleasantville " connections.

Jonas is raised in a family unit, with Katie Holmes and Alexander Skarsgård acting as parental units. He has two best friends, Fiona ( Odeya Rush ) and Asher ( Cameron Monaghan ), and they are about to "graduate from childhood," and take on their assigned jobs in the community. There is a gigantic ceremony, led by the Chief Elder (Meryl Streep, who shows up as a holograph the size of a building), and each child is called to the stage to receive their assignments. The entire community gathers in a massive stadium, everyone dressed in identical white, so it looks like a gigantic celestial choir or a formal-dress LGAT workshop. Everyone speaks in unison. Everyone claps the same way. Everyone looks forward. No one moves. The effect is eerie.

Jonas is surprised when he is not assigned a job at all. He is, instead, "selected" to be the next Receiver, because he apparently has the ability to "see beyond." He has no idea what that means. Jeff Bridges, who becomes The Giver once a new Receiver is chosen, sits in the front row of the stadium, grim and remote. The thousands of people present start to chant in a repetitive whisper, "Jonas … Jonas … Jonas …"

The training sessions, when they come, are part Mr. Miyagi, part vision quest, and part "Quantum Leap." The Giver bombards Jonas with memories from all of humanity, memories that thrust Jonas into the thick of the action: he feels snow falling for the first time, he is shown the full spectrum of colors, he is given shaky-cam experiences of war, he also dances around a Maypole with a saucy wench while wearing a pirate shirt. There are multiple quick-shot montage sequences of smiling babies, praying Muslims, crashing waves, paper lanterns, crying elderly people. The music swells, pushing the emotions on us, but the montages have the opposite effect intended. Instead of revelatory glimpses of the rich tapestry of human experience, they seem like Hallmark-collages uploaded on YouTube. Noyce has also made the questionable choice to co-opt real-world events, and so suddenly we see Tieneman Square in the montage, or the Arab Spring, or Nelson Mandela. It's cheap, hoping to ride the coattails of others, as opposed to finding a visual form and style that will actually express the strength of the human spirit.

Jonas begins to look around him with new eyes. He wants to kiss Fiona. He wants to have the choice to feel things that may be unpleasant. He is not allowed to share his training with others.

The young actors in the film are pretty nondescript, the lead included, although Thwaites seems to come alive in mischievous ways when he starts to take care of a fussy newborn who can't stop crying at night. Holmes and Skarsgård are both strange and unplaceable, playing human beings whose emotions are entirely truncated. "Precision of language, please," says Mother at the dinner table when one of her children starts to speak. Bridges galumphs across the screen, a madman out of Melville, tormented, lonely, in and out of reality. His memories sometimes flatten him. There is one moment where he tells Jonas what the word is for the "feeling between people," and his eyes burn with pain and loss as he says, "Love. It's called love." It's the only powerful moment in the film. His emotion is so palpable it reaches off the screen and grips your throat.

The use of heavy explanatory voiceover to open and close the film is disappointing, especially since a couple of lines have been added to the famous last paragraph of the book. Not surprisingly, the lines added remove it from the moody ambiguous statement of hope that it is in the book, and turn it into a complete platitude. We've heard it a hundred times before. It emanates Sameness with every word.

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O'Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master's in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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The Giver (2014)

Rated PG-13 for a mature thematic image and some sci-fi action/violence

Jeff Bridges as The Giver

Meryl Streep as Chief Elder

Brenton Thwaites as Jonas

Alexander Skarsgård as Jonas's father

Katie Holmes as Jonas' mother

Odeya Rush as Fiona

Cameron Monaghan as Asher

Taylor Swift as Rosemary

• Phillip Noyce
• Michael Mitnick
• Robert B. Weide

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• DVD & Streaming
• Drama , Romance , Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Content Caution

In Theaters

• August 15, 2014
• Brenton Thwaites as Jonas; Jeff Bridges as The Giver; Odeya Rush as Fiona; Meryl Streep as Chief Elder; Alexander Skarsgård as Father; Katie Holmes as Mother; Cameron Monaghan as Asher; Emma Tremblay as Lily; Taylor Swift as Rosemary

Home Release Date

• November 25, 2014
• Phillip Noyce

Distributor

• The Weinstein Company

Movie Review

Imagine a place nearly free of all pain and suffering, where people are truly equal and everyone gets along. Imagine a place where hatred does not exist, where minds are not clouded by confusion or suffering, where the sun always shines and no one ever lies.

Jonas actually lives in such a world. He’s never known anything but. If there was ever another way, lost as it is in the folds of distant time, it’s best that it’s forgotten.

Well, forgotten by most.

The Community has one special person who hasn’t forgotten—an old man known as the Receiver of Memory. He alone holds in his mind their forbidden history. It’s a gift and curse that makes him both respected and feared. If the Community’s elders need advice on something outside their own breadth of knowledge, they consult the Receiver, but otherwise they leave him alone.

Jonas sees him sitting with the rest of the elders during the yearly ceremony in which the Community marks various life-stages: when 9-year-olds get their first bikes and the aged peacefully retire to Elsewhere. This year’s a big deal for Jonas and his pals, Fiona and Asher. This year, they’ll be given their lifelong jobs—jobs that are supposed to fit each of them like a pair of well-worn jeans. The enthusiastic and adventurous Asher is accepted as a drone pilot. Pretty, caring Fiona is chosen as a caregiver for the Community’s pool of genetically engineered infants. And Jonas … well, he’s given the most prestigious gig of all: He’s tabbed to be the next Receiver of Memory.

Jonas dutifully bikes to the current Receiver of Memory’s house, built at the edge of the known world—quite literally on a cliff that plummets down into who-knows-what. He walks in and sees walls full of what the Receiver calls “books.” For the first time in his life, Jonas is encouraged to ask questions. And then, when the older Receiver—now called the Giver—clasps Jonas’ arms, the boy collects his first memory …

… of snow, fluttering and cold. Of a green fir-forested hillside wrapped in white powder. Of a sled careening down. Of wind-whipped hair and thudding heart and laughter and—

The memory ends. Jonas is back in his safe and serene, black-and-white world. But he’s been given his first glimpse into something that was lost, something both beautiful and terrifying that was banished so long ago.

[ Spoilers are contained in the following sections. ]

Positive Elements

The Giver , based on the Newbery Award-winning book by Lois Lowry, is a sci-fi meditation on what it means to be alive. We’ll plumb that concept a little more in the conclusion to this review, but for now, let’s turn our attention to Jonas—a guy whose eyes have been opened to the true depth and breadth of life for the first time.

In the beginning, when he’s kept from the Giver’s more painful memories, Jonas is overwhelmed by what’s been lost in the Community’s rigid system: thrill, joy, love, all the things that have been engineered out of existence in favor of vapid tranquility. Even though he’s been warned not to share his new knowledge and feelings with other members of the society, he can’t help himself: He simply must try to give them a taste of the excitement he’s experienced.

When he’s finally given more painful memories too, Jonas begins to understand why their forefathers punted all that troublesome emotion and messy color. But he never again fully buys the cold logic of it. He now possesses too great of an understanding of what life really means, what it should mean. He can fully discern right from wrong. And, better yet, now that he’s been granted that knowledge, he feels duty-bound to act on it. And so he does.

As Jonas’ sense of morality grows, other people help him in his quest to right the Community’s great wrong. The Giver, for example, also knows that the Community is in an unhealthy place and does what he can to help Jonas set things on a better track.

Specifically, at the core of this story and at the core of the Community is the issue of euthanasia. Few seem to understand that “releasing” people (from the elderly to the not-quite-perfect babies) to the so-called Elsewhere is actually killing them. But when Jonas learns that a baby named Gabriel is due to be released, he snatches it away and leaves the community with the tiny tot, hoping to not only rescue the child but somehow also restore the Community’s collective memories—once again making life the beautiful, complicated, choice-laden thing it should be. Murder has not really been abolished, Jonas realizes, it’s just been renamed.

Spiritual Elements

Religion is among the many things eradicated in the Community, and when Jonas is receiving memories, he sees depictions of unfamiliar expressions of worship: a Christian infant baptism, Muslims bowing to Mecca, paper lanterns rising into the sky as part of an Eastern religious ceremony. And when he rides the sled in his first new memory, he slides toward a picturesque cabin where we hear people singing “Silent Night.”

Sexual Content

When boys and girls in the Community enter adolescence, they begin experiencing something that’s called the “stirrings.” These sexual symptoms are perfectly normal, they’re told, but also undesirable. So daily injections of drugs are used to subdue them. Love and passion, then, are virtually unknown. Babies are genetically engineered, the fertilized eggs implanted into surrogates, then handed off to suitable family units after birth. It’s forbidden to even touch someone outside one’s assigned family unit.

As Jonas collects more memories, he forsakes his regimen of drugs and begins to experience amorous feelings, which are focused on Fiona, his longtime friend. The two grow closer: They hold hands and eventually kiss (both in real life and in Jonas’ dreams).

Violent Content

The Community’s practice of euthanasia is depicted with discreet images of a man inserting a syringe needle into the head of a baby. Then the small body is placed in a box, and the box is sent down a wall chute. A teenager is nearly dispatched with an injection as well.

Jonas scuffles with a guy, hitting him in the face. And in his memories, we see brief but uncomfortable and frightening scenes of death and war. He finds himself in a huge, jungle-based battle where a comrade is gunned down. (Jonas stares into his friend’s wide, unblinking eyes.) Guerilla fighters are shot out of trees. And the whole scene turns into a mass of blurred and frenetic images, sometimes tinged red.

We see elephants gunned down for their ivory, bullets penetrating thick hide. (All the wildlife on Earth has been exterminated at this point—gone so long that a plush stuffed elephant is thought to be a mythical creature called a hippo.)

Crude or Profane Language

Drug and alcohol content.

As mentioned, Community residents are injected with drugs every day to keep them under control. (Jonas and, eventually, Fiona trick the automatic dispensers into injecting the drugs into apples.)

I kinda feel for the founders of Jonas’ Community. Their intent, after all, was to create a grand and enjoyable utopia, not a devastatingly grayscale version of an Orwellian dystopia —a land so drained of real life that the world itself has lost its color. They just wanted to live someplace nice. They felt the same frustration that we do when we look at this fallen world of ours. They saw too much brutality. Too much hatred. Too much instability. With every generation, we find new ways to hurt each other and the world we live in. Every day, we find new ways to hurt ourselves.

The Giver believes that if humanity’s given another chance, we could do better. We could make better choices. But the Chief Elder isn’t so sure.

“When people have the freedom to choose, they choose wrong,” she says. “Every single time.”

She’s right more often than not, of course. We do choose wrong. We, as individuals and as a society, almost always choose wrong. It’s in our nature, a nature that’s overwhelmed with sin.

And yet God gives us the freedom to choose anyway.

In trying to make peace with this fallen world of ours, I think most of us push to mitigate and minimize life’s pain and unpleasantness in some way. We might try to smooth out the rough edges through drugs, like those in the Community do. Or we can retreat into semi-protected bubbles that are filled with tepid comforts, consumeristic pleasures, winning sports teams. We talk to one another about nothing but banalities. We invent air conditioning. These days, with all the modern distractions that are available, it’s actually fairly easy to slip into a sort of half-life.

Jonas wants more than that for his family and his friends. And God wants more for us too—even though He knows, and we know, that truly living life to the fullest will always involve discomfort and pain.

The Giver has all this and more on its mind. This is an ambitious movie that, while not matching the power and poignancy of Lois Lowry’s book, gives it a good run. Funded by Philip Anschutz’s family-focused Walden Media (the studio behind The Chronicles of Narnia movies) and stocked with top-rung talent (Oscar winners Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep play the Giver and the Chief Elder, respectively), this project hints at what a family film can truly be.

There’s no foul language in it. No sex scenes. No crude jokes. No gratuitous drug abuse. Hints of youthful attraction and snippets of violence are both restrained in their depictions and used fully in the service of the larger story and moral lesson. The Giver is a challenging film, to be sure. It deals with life, liberty, free will … and euthanasia, after all. But it never once wavers in its responsibility to escort moviegoers onto solid moral ground, to give them loads of positive material to think about and talk through afterwards.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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'the giver' strikes old and ominous notes about the dark side of serenity.

Mark Jenkins

Jeff Bridges (left) produces and stars as the title character in The Giver , alongside Australian actor Brenton Thwaites, who plays Jonas, his young apprentice. The Giver is the first film rendition of the popular 1993 young adult novel by Lois Lowry. Courtesy of The Weinstein Co. hide caption

Jeff Bridges (left) produces and stars as the title character in The Giver , alongside Australian actor Brenton Thwaites, who plays Jonas, his young apprentice. The Giver is the first film rendition of the popular 1993 young adult novel by Lois Lowry.

Multiplexes Heat Up For Summer Blockbuster Season

Arts & life, australian filmmaker phillip noyce gets serious.

It might seem hard to describe The Giver without revealing some of those plot points that touchy suspense fans call "spoilers." But this brisk, deftly art-directed parable is basically unspoilable. Even viewers who know nothing of its source, Lois Lowry's 1993 novel, will be able to anticipate every development.

That's because Lowry's vision of a serene but secretly corrupt future society offers little that wasn't imagined decades earlier in 1984 , Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451 . Lowry just cooked such books down for a preteen audience that hasn't read them.

After years of trying, producer and star Jeff Bridges finally got The Giver made because of the success of The Hunger Games and similar tales of noble teens in a world run by manipulative adults. So the first task was aging the novel's protagonist (Jonas, played by Brenton Thwaites) from 12 to 16.

Jonas lives in a community, called "the community," that's any high schooler's vision of hell: It's run by guidance counselors. Where in Divergent the kids were separated into different castes upon graduation, in The Giver they're given specific assignments. None is more specific than Jonas'. He's the new receiver, assigned to learn the real history of humanity from the bearded, avuncular title character (Bridges, clearly enjoying the sound of his own voice).

Katie Holmes (left) and Alexander Skarsgard play Jonas' parents, who support the efforts of The Giver 's dystopian government. David Bloomer/Courtesy of The Weinstein Co. hide caption

Katie Holmes (left) and Alexander Skarsgard play Jonas' parents, who support the efforts of The Giver 's dystopian government.

Among the many questions the movie barely attempts to answer is, why do the positions of giver and receiver exist? The elders, led by an often holographic Meryl Streep, don't want anyone else to know about the bad old days of war, famine and hatred. So why not assign Jonas to flip burgers for the rest of his life, and send the Giver on a long walk off a short pier?

Because, of course, there is violence just beneath the community's veneer of calm. That's one of the alarming if unsurprising things Jonas learns once he starts receiving — and stops taking his daily dose of mood controller. As in the substantially more macho Equilibrium , ingestion of a Valium-like drug is required. This relaxant suppresses emotion and individuality, and even its users' ability to distinguish color. So the first part of The Giver is in black and white, like Pleasantville .

If the movie hits ominous notes, they've all been heard many times before: There are no books or music in the futuristic planned community, human reproduction is controlled by the state, kissing is unknown, and families are not genetically related. Jonas has merely been assigned to his father (Alexander Skarsgard) and mother (a drawn-faced Katie Holmes).

To make it less of a kiddie story, director Phillip Noyce and scripters Michael Mitnick and Robert B. Weide have added romance (Jonas has the unauthorized hots for a classmate played by Odeya Rush) and boosted the action. There are chase scenes — including one on a bike path that's lighted even though people aren't allowed to go out at night — and confrontations. Also modestly exciting are the fragmentary flashbacks to a former receiver, played by Taylor Swift. (She and the community broke up, and they are never ever getting back together.)

Ultimately, Jonas must make a choice, and leave his sterile home for the forbidden outback. It's not a spoiler to reveal that he finds a refuge there. Or that this new abode offers the sort of picture-postcard coziness that could have been simulated by his former community's devious elders.

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Watch The Giver with a subscription on Max, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

What to Know

Phillip Noyce directs The Giver with visual grace, but the movie doesn't dig deep enough into the classic source material's thought-provoking ideas.

Audience Reviews

Cast & crew.

Phillip Noyce

Jeff Bridges

Meryl Streep

Chief Elder

Brenton Thwaites

Alexander Skarsgård

Katie Holmes

More Like This

Movie news & guides, this movie is featured in the following articles., critics reviews.

"Redemptive, Liberating Science Fiction Fable"

What You Need To Know:

(CC, BBB, ACACAC, Ro, FR, Pa, PC, E, V, MM) Strong Christian, redemptive allegory promoting love and faith with very strong moral, anti-statist content, including baptism is shown, the Christmas song “Silent Night” is heard twice as a symbol of hope and love, a pro-life message includes an anti-euthanasia message, the importance of families loving each other is shown, and self-sacrifice is exalted, mixed with some Romantic elements of following your heart and defying authority, some false religious/pagan elements include a Muslim prayer, Sufi dancers, witch doctor, and a Hindu worshippers inserted, and some politically correct elements such as an environmentalism message wherein an elephant is shot by hunters; no foul language; light violence but nothing graphic such as main character hits his friend in the face, chase scene, main characters falls off cliff but is okay, baby injected with a poison that kills it; no sex scenes or sexual immorality but teenagers kiss a couple times; no nudity; no alcohol use; no smoking or drug use; and, lying.

More Detail:

In THE GIVER, Jonas lives in a dystopian society, but when he receives memories of the past, he learns his community is missing out on some of the greatest elements of living. THE GIVER has a strong Christian, redemptive worldview extolling love, faith and life, but some caution is warranted.

Jonas lives in a dystopian society without color or feeling. When he turns 18, he and his friends are assigned jobs. Jonas is assigned a special position as the Receiver of the memories. Not knowing what that means, Jonas is nervous, but he goes to the edge of the community to meet the Giver. The Giver is an older man who has all the memories of history that he must pass down to Jonas. Jonas and the Giver are the only people in the community that will know the real history of the world. The community leaders have decided that those memories of pain, death, sorrow, happiness, joy, etc., prevent humanity from organizing a happy society. In order for the community to be rid of all these emotions, each member takes an injection every morning.

As Jonas receives the memories from the Giver, he starts to think that everyone should feel these emotions. Deciding not to take his morning injections, Jonas starts to feel more and fall in love with his childhood friend, Fiona. Fiona works in the nursery with the newborn babies. Each baby is given out to a family unit to be raised by that unit. When the baby isn’t growing properly or has some deformity, it’s killed. Only Jonas realizes the tragedy of the killing of the baby. When his family unit takes in a baby, he starts to feel attached and decides to give some of the memories to the baby. One day Jonas sees his father taking the baby to the center to be killed the next day. This spurs Jonas into action. He decides to save the baby and to destroy the border of memories so the people can be human again.

THE GIVER is an interesting, inspiring movie based on a best selling novel. THE GIVER has a clear storyline with good acting. The memories Jonas receive look like stock photography, but otherwise, the production values are high quality. The movie will definitely interest its audience of older children and teenagers.

THE GIVER has a strong Christian, redemptive worldview with a strong moral, anti-statist message attacking humanist schemes promoting a big government that controls each and every person. The movie extols love, compassion, self-sacrifice, and faith. There’s also a baptism scene and a couple important references to the Christmas hymn “Silent Night.” These are mixed with some light Romantic and politically correct elements. Also, the movie inserts references to false religion, Islam and Hinduism in a couple scenes, but these are overwhelmed by the movie’s Christian, redemptive, moral content. There are clear pro-family and pro-life messages, including the plot to save the baby. Furthermore, there are many clear Christian references and allegorical elements. Media-wise, freedom-loving viewers should enjoy THE GIVER.

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‘the giver’: what the critics are saying.

Phillip Noyce's adaptation of Lois Lowry's dystopian novel stars Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Brenton Thwaites, Alexander Skarsgard, Katie Holmes, Taylor Swift and Odeya Rush

By Ashley Lee

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The Giver , out Friday, brings Lois Lowry ‘s 1993 Newbery Medal-winning young-adult novel to the big screen, with Jeff Bridges playing the title character after a 20-year journey to adapt the dystopian title.

Directed by Phillip Noyce , The Weinstein Co. and Walden Media $30 million film also stars  Meryl Streep , Brenton Thwaites , Alexander Skarsgard , Katie Holmes , Taylor Swift , Cameron Monaghan , Odeya Rush and Emma Tremblay , and is expected  to debut in the mid-teens. It will be playing in roughly 3,000 locations.

Read what top critics are saying about The Giver :

The Hollywood Reporter ‘s film critic John DeFore  calls it “an agreeable YA riff on Orwell — via Logan’s Run — topped with the kind of magic-transformative baloney that passes for an ending in too many otherwise-fine Hollywood adventures.” He notes that “Noyce is unsurprisingly capable,” “Streep is wasted as the heavy, enforcing conformity,” and Skarsgard “more than anyone in the cast finds a way to embody Sameness while being unmistakably human.”

In the world of The Giver , “with the exception of the psychic sessions between Jonas and the Giver, everything about this scenario is grounded in the physical world; order is maintained not by some ancient magic, but by technology, pharmaceuticals and old-fashioned authoritarianism.” Therefore, of its lazy ending, he writes, “the hurdle Jonas eventually faces is more akin to the enchanted object that a wizard-battling hero can simply smash to break the spell enslaving his kingdom. Wham-bam, no need for feel-good scenes of the peace he has brought to his fellow peasants. This easy out should go over especially badly with readers attached to the novel’s much more ambiguous end — though to be fair, audiences by now are so used to this type of nonsense that it hardly even registers.”

The New York Times ‘ Manohla Dargis notes that “the enervating hash of dystopian dread, vague religiosity and commercial advertising-style uplift is nothing if not stale,” adding that scenes “mostly evoke one of those tear-jerking commercials that sell their wares with gurgling babies and squirming puppies.” The script is deemed “lamentable” and the film is “saddled with cheap digital effects and sets that needed more money or imagination or both.” Though the book paved the way for The Hunger Games  and Divergent, both film adaptations helped to make The Giver more marketable, yet “scene by formulaic scene, narrative cliche by cliche — [it] can’t help but come off as a poor copy of those earlier pictures.”    

The       Los Angeles Times ‘ Kenneth Turan says, “It’s not that there’s anything terribly wrong with The Giver , … It’s more that the resulting film has a bland, earnest, even pokey quality that no amount of tinkering with the book’s plot has rectified,” pointing out its inherently action-less plot and twice-written script. The “added action sequences and increased melodrama feel half-hearted, where whatever stabs at tension and conflict we see have a clunky, manufactured air. … The problem with The Giver  is not that it departs from the book by adding things such as surveillance drones and hints of romance, it’s that it has been unable to find a way to make the essence of the novel cinematically involving.”

The Boston Globe ‘s Ty Burr writes that it’s “a family-friendly dystopian nightmare that won’t offend anyone but won’t get them very excited, either.” The production design of going from black-and-white to color “ works, to a point, allowing us to access the world’s greater beauty at the same speed with which Jonas does. The sequences between the hero and the Giver are easily the film’s most interesting — they dramatize the birth of awareness — even if Bridges pushes his character’s great age into caricature at times. Thwaites does sincere well and existential agony rather less well. Streep seems to have summoned the minimum amount of her immense talent for this very sketchy role.”

USA Today ‘s Claudia Puig  gives the film two stars out of four and praises the adult performances over the teen character portrayals. “While the 1993 book was a thoughtful, subtle meditation on mind control and the blandness of life in a pseudo-Utopia, the movie doesn’t convey that depth, … it lacks the resonance and mythic quality of Lowry’s literary allegory.” The memory sequences are less poignant onscreen than in prose, now like “a United Colors of Benetton ad,” but the “movie’s weakest segment is an extended action climax that turns this potent allegory — and its open-ended denouement — into a generic action thriller, complete with drones and menacing enforcers racing around on motorized bikes.”

Email: [email protected] Twitter: @cashleelee

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Dove Review

“The Giver” is an intriguing tale of a society that has chosen to ignore memories and emotions in order to suppress negative thoughts, jealousy, violence, romance and faith. The story begins “after the ruin” and we are exposed to a world without grief, color or independent thinking. Conformity is the rule and teenagers are assigned jobs based upon their skills. One young man named Jonas is chosen to be “The Receiver” of memories and is introduced to his new mentor “The Giver” who currently safeguards these experiences. When Jonas is exposed to a full range of emotions and violence of past humankind, it awakens in him a desire to break the chains of oppression by sharing these newfound feelings with everyone else.

The movie is a powerful testament to the gifts of individuality, emotion and faith. The story is told in a straightforward manner and will keep the audience’s attention throughout. Rarely do we see films these days that are sensitive to the desires of viewers who want to experience an uplifting film without senseless language or overly graphic violence. “The Giver” delivers a wholesome experience and we are pleased to award it our Dove “Family-Approved” Seal for ages 12 and over.

Dove Rating Details

Mildly disturbing flashback scenes of war violence with shootings and explosions but very little blood. Elephants are shot in the head at close range by poachers but no blood is seen; A boy punches another; Baby seen with a little scrape on his face; Man tasered; Teenager and a baby are chased by others

Teens kiss and embrace twice.

Infant euthanized with an injection; People accept daily injections

Euthanasia of the weak both young and old

More Information

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Review by Brian Eggert August 16, 2014

For some of us, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) was mandatory middle school reading. Nowadays, Lois Lowry’s similarly themed young adult novel The Giver (1993) has become the dystopian text of choice for school curriculums. And while Bradbury’s text was made into a serviceable film by François Truffaut in 1966, the film of Lowry’s text is nowhere near as accomplished. Lowry’s heady exploration into the importance of shared learning and emotion in society through a muted, deeply philosophical narrative, has been exchanged for a paranoid teenage dystopia escape movie, the likes of which we’ve seen before (recently in The Hunger Games and Divergent ). Producer-star Jeff Bridges and director Phillip Noyce ( Salt ) deliver a conceptually interesting production of modest budget and notable castmembers, but the abbreviated runtime of 94 minutes is too long concerned with perpetuating a white-knuckle thriller than embracing the thoughtful discussions of Lowry’s book. But this film review is not just the ranting of a reader devoted to the source material; those unfamiliar with the book will undoubtedly feel plagued by the story’s sense of implausibility as well.

The film opens with voiceover narration from Lowry’s protagonist, Jonas, an 18-year-old boy (played by 25-year-old Australian actor Brenton Thwaites) who introduces us to his colorless world, which, for the first third is presented in black-and-white. The film’s narrator goes on to explain all the ways in which his world is different than ours. There’s no color, art, emotion, lying, platonic relationships, bad weather, war, or expression whatsoever, as the leaders of this isolated flatland community—which, similar to many others like it apparently, rests on a plateau surrounded by clouds—have suppressed such desires through a daily injection. Chemicals inhibit people’s desires and therefore, society can function peacefully, driven by the prevailing desire for peace, safety, and above all, a “sameness” of conduct and even race. And there’s a pointed concern for “precision of language”—as a result, metaphors have disappeared (at least no one will annoyingly misuse “literally” in a figurative sense here, such as “I could literally eat a horse”). But Jonas is different; he can see subdued impressions of color.

From the outset, the film’s biggest mistake is telling us how the setting is disturbingly different from our own, without letting us discover it, piece by piece, by ourselves. Screenwriters Michael Mitnick and Robert B. Weide may have included many scenes from the book, but their treatment, and the film’s approach with a narrator who has the benefit of hindsight to guide his voiceover’s observations, remove much of the surprise and shock that would normally come with many of the story’s most potent revelations. Moreover, the writers clearly have it in mind to make this the next teen phenomenon after Twilight or The Hunger Games , and in turn, fabricate a forbidden love subplot involving Jonas and his friend Fiona (Odeya Rush). All the while, Noyce seems to forget that he’s directing a world in which emotions have been suppressed. The characters, particularly the youngsters, laugh and play and worry without inhibition. The only emotions that appear to have been curtailed are those born in their loins. Once Jonas stops taking his shots and convinces Fiona to do the same, the “stirrings” below the belt return. (Then again, Lowry’s book has Jonas experience some “stirrings” while bathing an elderly woman, which may not have translated well to the screen.)

On this world’s version of graduation day, young adults like Jonas and his peers are assigned their job in the community. But at the ceremony, Jonas is skipped over and singled out. Because of his capacity to “see beyond,” Jonas has been chosen to be “The Receiver of Memory”, a mysterious position now held by a bearded Obi-Wan Kenobi-like figure (Bridges, using his Rooster Cogburn voice, but without the Southern drawl), who, now called “The Giver”, will transfer the vast majority of human memories into Jonas. Why The Receiver is a necessary community function isn’t really made clear in the film, although Lowry’s book suggests he guides the community’s elders, headed here by a resident Big Brother figure called The Chief Elder (Meryl Streep), by offering his insight based on his knowledge of history and human memory. The community has jettisoned all history, memory, and emotion so humankind can keep functioning safely, productively, mindlessly. And so, Jonas begins his training, and his marked ability to see colors is enhanced. Soon he’s feeling all sorts of emotions and can barely contain himself.

This becomes troublesome for The Chief Elder, who carefully monitors Jonas’ progress in fear of another failure, like the one ten years ago that is alluded to throughout. Jonas’ creepy parents, his regulator mother (Katie Holmes, whose casting may have an intentional off-screen parallel), and his baby-nurturing father (Alexander Skarsgård), also show concern that their son is dancing and smiling too much, while his younger sister, Lily (Emma Tremblay), persists as a happy little girl. Meanwhile, The Giver shows Jonas the joys and horrors of humankind before The Ruin—the cataclysm that impelled this world into existence. Passing on the knowledge and wisdom that weigh on him, The Giver encourages Jonas to escape when the young student can no longer bear the strain, or accept how wrong it is for the elders to deny people the basic freedoms of emotion. Before long, the film devolves into a chase sequence, complete with Jonas outrunning The Chief Elder’s motorbike goons and flying drones. It all leads to The Giver pleading to The Chief Elder in a puts-too-fine-a-point-on-it speech about the importance of love, and Jonas’ escape leading to the return of all emotions and history to the community.

As both an adaptation and a stand-alone film, The Giver is something of a mess. The emotional performances are out of touch with what’s supposed to be an unaffected environment, but nothing about this onscreen world is detached. It’s a world whose secrets are shared within the first few scenes, whose unknowns are strewn out for us, and whose sense of discovery is nonexistent. What’s more, Noyce’s conceptual choice to gradually move from black-and-white to color is inconsistent; since the effect is meant to represent Jonas’ perspective, we’re left wondering why there are still visible colors in scenes where Jonas isn’t present. Worst of all, the filmmakers of this modestly budgeted production remove Lowry’s thought-provoking intent from a book that, for some school districts, is potent enough to be banned. But no one will be thinking about the importance of memory and pain, love and history, and their impact on society after the film is over. But no one will be banning The Giver , because it’s not controversial; it’s a fascinating story that’s been reengineered to fit an overexposed, commercially viable Hollywood formula tuned for mass consumption and mindless viewership.

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Movie review: ‘The Giver’

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By Joseph McAleer • Catholic News Service • Posted August 18, 2014

NEW YORK (CNS) — Hollywood continues to makes the future a dangerous and challenging place to be a teenager.

Arriving on the heels of “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent” is “The Giver” (Weinstein), another futuristic thriller where young people find themselves running for their lives.

This time, however, the tone is softer, and the overall meaning more profound, with a welcome pro-life message that will resound with viewers of faith.

Directed by Philip Noyce (“Salt”), “The Giver” is based on the best-selling 1993 novel by Lois Lowry about a utopian world that, on the surface at least, is free from suffering, hunger, and violence. A daily injection of every member of “the Community” ensures that memories and emotions are suppressed, along with freedom, choice, individuality, religion — and temptation.

“When people have the freedom to choose, they choose wrong, every single time,” intones the Chief Elder (Meryl Streep).

Everything in this Orwellian world is identical and monochromatic: homes, clothes, even the family unit. Just two children per household, one boy and one girl, each genetically engineered and born to designated birth mothers.

When the children come of age, they receive their vocation, the role they are to play in the Community. The time has come for Mother (Katie Holmes) and Father (Alexander Skarsgard) to present their son, Jonas (Brenton Thwaites).

Sensing something unusual about the teen, the Chief Elder selects Jonas to inherit the esteemed position of Receiver of Memories, a kind of repository of the past, warts and all.

The current Receiver, known as the Giver (Jeff Bridges), is weary, shopworn, and ready to pass the baton. He’s haunted by the failure of a recent designee, Rosemary (Taylor Swift), and is determined to succeed with Jonas.

Like Yoda taking on Luke Skywalker, the Giver begins Jonas’ training, passing on memories of the “real” world.

Jonas is overwhelmed by newfound emotions and memories. He experiences love and happiness for the first time, but also cruelty, war and death — and all in glorious Technicolor. When the fog clears, he reaches an epiphany: without the knowledge of suffering, one cannot appreciate true joy.

“If you can’t feel, what is the point?” he asks. That belief is reinforced by his growing love for a fellow teen, Fiona (Odeya Rush), along with the Giver’s wisdom that “with faith comes love and hope.”

Jonas’ determination that everyone in the Community should share in his knowledge is accelerated when he uncovers a dark secret: the Elders sanction euthanasia to eliminate imperfect babies and the frail elderly.

Filled with outrage, he joins forces with the Giver to restore the proper balance to society.

There is a disturbing scene in “The Giver” involving euthanasia that may upset younger viewers. For mature teens and their parents, however, it can spark a necessary conversation about the sanctity of life at all ages, winningly endorsed by this worthy film.

The film contains mild action violence and a disturbing scene of euthanasia. The Catholic News Service classification is A-II — adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

McAleer is a guest reviewer for Catholic News Service.

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Reel Rundown: ‘What Jennifer Did’ gives view into dark recesses of mind of woman who resorted to murder of parents

America, it appears, is obsessed with crime. Or, at least, with true-crime programming

A 2022 poll by the public opinion and data company YouGov indicated that half of Americans enjoy true-crime content. Furthermore, one in three said that they devoured something related to true crime at least once a week.

Patricia Bryan, a professor emerita from the University of North Carolina Law School, has an opinion as to why this is. Co-author of the nonfiction book “Midnight Assassin: A Murder in America’s Heartland,” Bryan says it has to do with a confluence of what she describes as “escapism and entertainment.”

“It speaks to why people go into haunted houses or ride a roller coaster,” she said in an interview with her university’s magazine. “There’s something about facing danger when it’s not real, it’s not personal. People like to be scared or like to see the dark recesses of someone’s mind.”

That may explain why one of the highest-rated movies streaming on Netflix now is the documentary “What Jennifer Did.” Written and directed by Jenny Popplewell, the film tells the story of a 2010 murder that occurred in a Toronto suburb.

Jennifer Pan is the daughter of a Vietnamese couple who had immigrated to Canada. But while the couple, mother Bich Ha Pan and father Huei Hann Pan, had adapted to a middle-class Canadian lifestyle, they retained a strict Vietnamese attitude toward parenting.

Jennifer’s parents demanded excellence from her, and they controlled every aspect of her life, not allowing her to date or even attend parties all through high school. She had some musical talent, as her piano teacher Fernando Baldassini explains, but she fell short of her parents’ expectations in other areas. And over the years, she found ways to fool them into thinking that she was achieving what they expected of her.

Yet all this, and more, would come to light only gradually. And only after the night that she called emergency services in a panic, claiming that someone had broken into the house, tied her up and shot her parents.

With Jennifer’s mother dead and her father seriously wounded and in a coma, the police had little to go on but the young woman’s testimony. Investigators began to question her story, though, and their suspicions were confirmed when dad woke up.

Director Popplewell reveals all this slowly, even if her film’s title gives away who did what from the beginning.

Watching investigators slowly break down Jennifer’s story, confronting her with one contradiction after the next, isn’t that much different from watching what plays out each week on such fictional shows as “Law & Order” or “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”

Still, while the who, what, where and how aspects of the crime eventually are solved, Popplewell never truly gets to the heart of why. Yes, Jennifer Pan was controlled and manipulated, maybe even abused.

The fact is many children grow up in similar if not worse circumstances. Yet, few of them resort to murder.

Entertaining as it can be, maybe delving into the recesses of some minds is just too daunting a task for us to easily understand.

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