The Giver is a studios way of pandering to the dystopian teen drama crowd...

| Original Score: C+ | Aug 19, 2024

As both an adaptation and a stand-alone film, The Giver is something of a mess.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Aug 5, 2022

Noyce and company have made a reverent film that both honors its beloved beginnings and provides audiences with a thoughtful piece of family entertainment.

| Feb 11, 2022

Taylor Swift showed up as a piano-playing hologram with a bad wig and it officially became a comedy.

| Aug 13, 2021

A small movie with big ideas about individual freedoms, memory, traditions and customs. Important themes one and all, but they're wrapped in a movie that does not do them justice.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 1, 2021

To my own surprise I ended up enjoying this movie more than I anticipated I would after the first few minutes in.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Nov 20, 2020

The cast is truly the thing in Phillip Noyce's adaptation of Lois Lowry's YA novel The Giver.

| Original Score: 2.5/4.0 | Sep 8, 2020

Noyce's cinematography is striking, shifting from dullish gray to the full spectrum of the rainbow, but the movie's plot and final denouement are telegraphed from virtually its first nanosecond.

| Aug 13, 2020

Bland and flavorless.

| Original Score: C | Jul 7, 2020

For a film that claims to champion colorful nonconformity, The Giver is depressingly drab.

| Jan 8, 2020

The powerful allegory that initially made Lowry's text such a lasting achievement seems cheapened by the glossy, over baked screen version that seems more medicated than the anesthetized minds of its characters.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 30, 2019

This could have been an actual "young adult" film, letting preteens know that the conflicting waves of emotion they're about to receive are worth it. Instead, it's a movie where a holographic cameo by Taylor Swift isn't the worst part.

| Original Score: D | Aug 6, 2019

Although the film has a few merits, including the deft use of a colour motif that harks back to Oz, a dull and predictable ending does nothing to help it overall: the studio clearly has its fingers crossed for yet another series.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 25, 2019

Read the book instead.

| Original Score: C | Apr 30, 2019

Yet in its execution, the whole lacks the courage of its convictions with no sign of the drama necessary to make it as thought-provoking it pretends to be.

| Mar 2, 2019

But with 94 minutes of running time, it would have benefited from additional scenes... instead of an extensive introduction narrative and rushing through the third act with action towards a rather abrupt ending.

| Jan 25, 2019

Despite the fact that I'm an adult who has never read the book, I still felt like I was being pandered to. It didn't need to be that way.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Dec 11, 2018

"The Giver" succeeds in entertaining in the way it reminds us what makes the human race so special...the ability to love.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 21, 2018

The bottom line is that if you focus on its message, The Giver has some very important things to say. You just might find yourself a little frustrated with the information you get (or rather, don't get) along the way.

| Nov 28, 2017

Despite the impressive cast (Taylor Swift has a cameo), performances are uneven.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 14, 2017