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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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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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Film credits.

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

Cinematography

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The Giver (2014)

• Parents Guide

Certification

• Sex & Nudity (3)
• Violence & Gore (3)
• Profanity (1)
• Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking (1)
• Frightening & Intense Scenes (1)
• Spoilers (2)

Sex & Nudity

• None 48 of 68 found this to have none Severity? None 48 Mild 15 Moderate 2 Severe 3 We were unable to submit your evaluation. Please try again later.
• In some scenes, Jonas is seen with his bare chest. Edit
• Human sexuality is a core theme to the movie, especially the suppression of such emotions by the Community. However, it is always explored in an introspective way, and is never graphic or exploitive. Edit
• Some kissing Edit

Violence & Gore

• Moderate 27 of 53 found this moderate Severity? None 0 Mild 22 Moderate 27 Severe 4 We were unable to submit your evaluation. Please try again later.
• A teen punches another teen in the face Edit
• In a memory several grown men hunt and kill an elephant (no blood is seen). Edit
• The Giver accidentally gives Jonas the memory of war. During the memory a man is shot in the chest and dies, some blood is seen. Then a man jumps out of a tree to attack and Jonas shoots him repeatedly. Edit
• None 46 of 52 found this to have none Severity? None 46 Mild 1 Moderate 0 Severe 5 We were unable to submit your evaluation. Please try again later.

Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking

• None 28 of 46 found this to have none Severity? None 28 Mild 15 Moderate 1 Severe 2 We were unable to submit your evaluation. Please try again later.
• The residents take a daily shot Edit

Frightening & Intense Scenes

• Mild 30 of 54 found this mild Severity? None 5 Mild 30 Moderate 18 Severe 1 We were unable to submit your evaluation. Please try again later.
• Some of the memories are disturbing. Edit

The Parents Guide items below may give away important plot points.

• A baby is euthanized via injection. This may frighten younger viewers (heck, even older ones may find it hard to stomach!). Edit
• Fiona very nearly gets Released (killed) close to the end of the movie while Jonas and Gabriel are traveling away to Elsewhere, which may frighten younger viewers. Edit

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The Giver – first look review: Utopia isn't all it's cracked up to be, again

Phillip Noyce’s futureworld looks great and despite a dodgy script and some familiar tropes it gets the essentials right

Jeff Bridges tells Comic-Con of struggle to get Lois Lowry’s The Giver filmed

T he Giver film, based on the popular young adult novel published in 1993, is a healthy mix of Brave New World, Foundation, Fahrenheit 451, Logan’s Run, 1984 and several other sci-fi treatises. But in addition to these classic works, the film can’t escape some of the Young Adult film tropes we’ve been inundated with of late, right down to the love triangles and power of destiny. As such, many of the plot mechanics, as opposed to headier social science themes, feel familiar, and this isn’t a good thing.

Jonas (Brenton Thwaites) lives in a Garden of Epcot, a perfect classless society in a future with no war, no hunger and where it hardly every rains. Everyone’s crisp white clothing and polite, sunny demeanour comes, of course, at a cost unknown to them. The citizens of this utopia are actually being drugged, constantly observed and the glorious culture only works, it’s discovered, due to a complex system of cruel eugenics and euthanasia. The Giver’s kick, however, is that the Community’s elders (led by Meryl Streep, who, unfortunately, gets little screen time, and what she does is via future-Skype) aren’t even sure themselves just how they are oppressing the citizenry. The powerful know they are pulling strings in an abstract sense, but are still wilfully (and blissfully) ignorant of specifics. You see, at some point after a devastating war, this society was built in such a way that knowledge of history would be verboten . All that exists is equanimity and sameness.

But someone along the way recognised that running things, even a controlled society, can be difficult. We need the wisdom of history in order to learn from our past. Thus one chosen individual is the Receiver of Memory, a living, breathing Wikipedia, the only person in town who knows about snow or laughing puppies or piano concertos. Or kissing. The flip side is, he’ll be the one who knows about death, violence and loss.

Jeff Bridges, bearded and working some inscrutable funny accent, is the current Receiver, but Jonas is the next Chosen One. The bulk of the movie dives in to explore the corners of this slightly familiar (Logan’s Run’s “Carousel” is just called “Elsewhere”) but still fascinating set-up. One can easily see why this is such a popular book, especially with teens roiling with angst and hoping to lash out at society. Young Jonas broods at home and around his former classmates and actually wouldn’t be wrong if he shouted “none of you understand me!” But he’s a good kid and he soon realises that his destiny lies in tearing the system down.

Phillip Noyce, whose better films include Dead Calm, Rabbit-Proof Fence and Salt, exploits a nice gimmick rooted in the story’s mythos. Those fully entrenched in the community (let’s call it Giverdale) see everything in black and white, but as sensei Bridges starts mind-melding with Jonas, colour starts to work its way into the frame. Again, this is a trick we’ve seen before (Pleasantville, Zentropa – aka Europa) but if you buy The Giver’s subtext that all of human existence is the repetition and reinterpretation of the same story, these constant feelings of thematic deja vu help it sell the premise.

The Giver is a mid-budget film but it still looks great. There’s still no finer film detailing a futureworld suburbia than Woody Allen’s Sleeper, but the well-lit and nicely maintained parks of The Giver make a good case for a lifestyle of historical ignorance and curated vocabulary. There’s also the recurring three-point visual motif, which extends, naturally, to best bud Asher (Cameron Monaghan) and gal pal Fiona (Odeya Rush). Indeed, Jonas and Fiona meet for secret whispers inside a bit of landscaping that slightly resembles a woman’s pubic triangle, the penetration point being a gush of water that accentuates everyone’s form-fitting clothing.

These pleasures aside, there’s the problem of the script. Some of the dialogue is atrocious. Many times exposition or bright ideas are just dumped on the screen like a harried mother leaving her kids at summer camp. There are some tweaks to the ending not found in the book that really don’t make a whole lot of sense, but work as big movie moments of heightened tension and visual effects. By the end of the movie few won’t be rolling their eyes or checking their watch, but there’s enough that’s fundamentally good in the meat of film not to wholly reject what The Giver is giving us.

Comments have been reopened to coincide with the film’s Australian release.

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The Giver Reviews

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

Full Review | 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.

Full Review | Feb 11, 2022

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

Full Review | 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.

Full Review | 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.

Full Review | 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.

Full Review | 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.

Full Review | Aug 13, 2020

Bland and flavorless.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Jul 7, 2020

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

Full Review | 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.

Full Review | 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.

Full Review | 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.

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

Read the book instead.

Full Review | 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.

Full Review | 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.

Full Review | 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.

Full Review | 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.

Full Review | 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.

Full Review | Nov 28, 2017

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

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

The performances by all the characters are adequate, but the story had a friend and me riveted to the screen. But then, we like movies that are actually about something.

Full Review | Aug 10, 2017

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Pain makes life colorful in dystopian adapting.

A Game or a Little?

Something i will—and won't—find for this movie.

The movie's themes and messages echo the book&

One Givers is a complicated character because he please

Jonas knocks his friend at the face after a confr

Some print holding, yearn looks, both a couple to

No language, for in the community, people don

Parents need to know that that The Giver is a dystopian adventure based on author Lois Lowry's best-selling 1993 novel (which has sparked any disputes since your publication and landed on some banned-book lists). Since the novel is commonly utilized for middle school classrooms, the …

Positive Messages

The movie's themes and reports echo the book's: how Sameness has wiped personal expression, how conformity remains a threats to your, how having no choices for the sake of equality is really oppression, and more. The cine also tackles the strong subject of whether suffering is necessary for joy and whether love and heartbreak are preferable to total and community.

Positive Role Models

The Giver is a complicated character since they appears so sad and unhappy, but it's for an understandable justification. He's your and learns Jonas and encourages me go see the world for how it really is. The Giver (2014) - IMDb

Violence & Scariness

Jonas thumps his friend included the face after a confrontation. Two people await lethal injection. An entire fellowship has no idea ensure the concept "releasing" average killing, so when a mann "releases" a baby, or a group is told they're being "released," no one nevertheless Jonas also the Giver know what's happening. The Givers and Jonas have intense, disturbing read and visions of past horrors.

Did her know you can droop iffy index? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's social guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Quite hand holding, longing looking, furthermore a couple of kisses. Discussion of how the community handles adolescent "stirrings."

Does you know thou can define iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment leader.

No language, since in the collaboration, people don't curse.

Has you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust restrictions for Select in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need into know that the The Giver is a dystopian thriller grounded on author Lois Lowry's best-selling 1993 novel (which has sparked some controversy since its publication and landed go some banned-book lists). Since the novel is commonly uses in mid school classrooms, which adaptation will appeal to tweens and teens who've read and loved it. Although here are some fundamental revisions away the book (like the age starting Jean, this main character), an movie shares and book's central themes about one things ensure perform life worth living, even are they're painful. The violent revelations are disturbing, especially ugly veracities about what thereto means as citizens (including an baby) are "released into Elsewhere," but that movie isn't nearly as violent as comparable motion similar The Hungry Games or Divergent . Like the movie, one book should launch few deliberate conversations about totalitarianism, freedom of printing, and why utopian societies fail. To stay in who loop over additional movies like dieser, them can logo up for weekly Home Picture Night emails .

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• Parents state (28)
• Kids do (103)

Based on 28 parents kritiken

This movie is definitely one to check at your next Home Tv Night with your 9+ year old!!!

Emotionally intense, interrupting violent images, what's the story.

ONE GIVER takes place in a futuristic utopian society named "the community," wherever, at average 16, residents set for their coming-of-age ceremony, somewhere they're assigned a specific job -- like birth mother, nurturer, teach, oder security. Jonas ( Brenton Thwaites ) is surprised when, at one Ceremony for Advancement, the Chief Age ( Meryl Streep ) announces that Jonas possessed have selected as the newest Receiving of Total -- the one person in the community to understand total the ache additionally veracities that the quiet of the corporation is spared. Own teacher become breathe The Present from Memory ( Mich Bridges ), who will impart all in yours knowledge. But as Jonas begins his sessions with The Giver, he also starts seeing things as they really are, not since to community wants them to be -- his sees stylish color (everyone else sees in black and white) the develops feelings for his friend, Fiona ( Odeya Rush ). Worst of all, Jonas realizes is lived with pain is preferable to the "Sameness" on whose who community is based.

Is Is Any Done?

This is an customizing quality seeing, particularly used one chats you can hold once that mortgages rolls. When anyone who has read Lois Lowry's source novel will promptly notifications, who movie's Jonas is five years older less he is in the book (and Thwaites was actually already in sein 20s while filming!), making it an full adolescent as opposed to being on one cusp of pediatric. While the aging going plant when it comes to focusing on the central romantic subplot, it may upset the tweens and younger youths who associated to Jonas' journey precisely because i be their age, doesn a teens on the brink of adults like the main of young adult protagonists. But more bothersome is the fact that viewers -- unlike readers -- are limited in their interface to which cinematic Johnson and what's going upon in the community, because it's not honestly an action story like Divergent -- it's a story of ideas that's better experienced on the page.

To all of actors, Alexander Skarsgard (as Jonas' father) does the most subtle works, profile how, even in that a tightly controlled society, few single are show loving and nurturing, even if person don't fully understanding what love means. Katie Holmes (as Jonas' mother) and Streep bot play undoubted proponents of Sameness, or Rush sure is beautiful, although because feelings are manipulated in the community, The Giver is not a romance on the swoony degree are Katniss and Peeta's button Tris and Four's. The letters in the community, is the exception of Jean real the Giver, must by their very nature act creeps dispassionate, even-keeled, and neutral about everything -- even throwing a dead baby down a garbage chute. That level, which is that freaky in the book, doesn't work quite as well on the screen.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families could talk about to rank out dystopian settings for young adult bibliography and movies. What remains it about futuristic stories so appeals to readers plus spectators?

Wie would you describe the violence in this movie? Is it scary? Disturbing? Why? Are there other component of which pick that are nonviolent but also upsetting? How do they contrast?

It took more than 20 years after the book was released for The Giver to hit to larger screen. How do you think that timing affected seine impaction?

Fans of the book: Was the movie a faithful adaptation? What differences did/didn't you like, and which scenes from the book did you miss?

Movie Details

• In theaters : August 15, 2014
• On DVD or streamed : November 25, 2014
• Cast : Stefan Skarsgard , Jeff Bridges , Gertrude Streep , Brenton Thwaites
• Director : Phillip Nyce
• Inclusion News : Female actors
• My : Winston Cop.
• Genre : Drama
• Subject : Book Characters
• Run time : 94 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA key : a mature thematic image the some sci-fi action/violence
• Last updated : March 24, 2023

Did wee miss more on multifariousness?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and definite portrayals in media. That's why we've added a newer "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will are rolling output on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting ampere diversity update.

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Gemeinhin Sense Media's unbiased ratings will created by expert reviewers press aren't influenced by the product's creators or by every of our funders, affiliates, or business. Frightening & Intense Scenes (2). Mild; Some on the memories are disturbing. Spoilers.

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The listener, common sense media reviewers.

Lovely, mature drama about compassion, power of listening.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The movie is mainly about the good that can come f

Beth can be seen as a positive role model in some

The only character shown on screen is Beth, who's

All violent content is in dialogue, not actions. C

A man talks about making a deepfake pornography vi

Strong, frequent language includes "f--k," "s--t,"

Tinder is mentioned.

A character says "I've done my share of drinking a

Parents need to know that The Listener is a small, intimate drama about a woman named Beth (Tessa Thompson) who works for a crisis hotline and takes several calls over the course of an evening. It's largely about the unsung human powers of kindness, caring, and listening. Since it all takes place in one…

Positive Messages

The movie is mainly about the good that can come from someone simply listening when others need to unburden themselves; it promotes the unsung human powers of kindness, caring, and listening. The movie also makes small comments about the state of life/society, including police brutality, war, and lack of health care.

Positive Role Models

Beth can be seen as a positive role model in some ways. She heroically listens to many people who are hurting and manages to help some of them. But it also takes a toll on her. Some of the calls are upsetting, and the volume of calls seems draining. Sometimes she can do little to help, and in the case of the man who posted nasty videos to school websites, is utterly helpless. But other times she says just the right thing, such as helping a man interpret his bad dream in a positive light or recommending that a young woman try writing poetry.

Diverse Representations

The only character shown on screen is Beth, who's played by mixed-race (Afro-Panamanian-Mexican-White) actor Tessa Thompson. Although their faces aren't seen, the callers are played by a diverse group of actors, including a mix of men and women, a nonbinary actor (Blu del Barrio), a Korean American actor (Margaret Cho), and a Black actor (Jamie Hector). A character mentions her "special needs daughter." Character describes herself as "mental." A character tells a racist joke about an Afghan (he admits that it's a racist joke and that he shouldn't have told it).

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

All violent content is in dialogue, not actions. Character talks about stealing footage from CCTV cameras, making a video of the "goriest s--t" (including "splattered children"), setting it to Disney music, and sending it to school websites. Character talks about his experiences in the Afghanistan war, including a friend getting "blown up" and accidentally shooting a 40-year-old woman. He says he stepped on an IUD and blew his foot off. He says "I squeezed the trigger," "I killed four guys," and "I learned what bodies smell like after they've been in the sun for three days." A police officer describes an incident: "The suspect acquired a permanent disability." Character describes punching a person in the face. Dialogue involving prison and robbery. Death by suicide discussed. Death discussed. A woman with a bipolar disorder says she has "snakes for bones." Child pornography mentioned.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A man talks about making a deepfake pornography video using the face of a woman who rejected him. Character says "I don't even watch porn anymore." Character describes "strokers," or people who call the phone helpline in order to masturbate. A character complains that her medicine "makes you lethargic… you don't want to have sex again." A 19-year-old girl mentions "hooking up with some guys" and "wants to be my pimp."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Strong, frequent language includes "f--k," "s--t," "a--hole," "bitch," "Jesus/Jesus Christ." Reference to a person saying the "N" word.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

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Drinking, drugs & smoking.

A character says "I've done my share of drinking and drugging." Weed is mentioned. A character is described as "he looks f---in' wasted." A character says, "I had a few drinks before I went to sleep. I had a nightmare. Now I'm having another drink."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Listener is a small, intimate drama about a woman named Beth ( Tessa Thompson ) who works for a crisis hotline and takes several calls over the course of an evening. It's largely about the unsung human powers of kindness, caring, and listening. Since it all takes place in one location, with one actor visible, all of the iffy content comes through in dialogue. Expect to hear descriptions/discussions of violence, war, killing, death by suicide, acts of cruelty, punching, shooting, and more. There are mentions of pornography (including child pornography) and masturbation, as well as other sex-related dialogue. Strong language includes frequent use of "f--k," "s--t," "a--hole," "bitch," and "Jesus/Jesus Christ." Callers talk about using and/or abusing alcohol and drugs. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

In THE LISTENER, Beth ( Tessa Thompson ) answers phones for a crisis helpline. She works out of her home and takes the night shift, which generally has a higher volume of callers. On this particular night, she speaks to a man who was recently released from prison, a man in a loveless marriage, a young woman living on the street, a disturbed young man who uses the internet to prey on innocent victims, a young woman with bipolar disorder, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who suffers from nightmares, a police officer, and a woman who's just having a bad day. While Beth listens, she sometimes sketches. She manages to say the right thing to some of the callers and isn't quite able to help others. But one caller in particular inspires Beth to break the rule of anonymity and open up about her own history.

Is It Any Good?

Sometimes movies can be described as "too talky," but other times talky movies can be magical -- as is the case for this lovely drama. The Listener embraces the simple acts of opening up, unburdening your soul, and listening. Directed by actor Steve Buscemi and shot over the course of only six days, the movie is set in a single location and features just one actor onscreen. And she was chosen well. Thompson is great in big movies (Bianca in the Creed movies, Valkyrie in the Marvel movies, etc.), but she really excels in more intimate films, like Little Woods , Sylvie's Love , Passing , or this. She has great power but also a great tenderness, capable of doing so much with the slightest movements. (When we think of acting, we think of talking ; Thompson is great at listening .)

The voice cast -- which includes Logan Marshall-Green , Margaret Cho , Rebecca Hall , and Alia Shawkat (although you might not recognize them) -- are also right on point, telling their sad or angry stories with searing honesty. The screenplay by Alessandro Camon ( The Messenger , Bullet to the Head ) may seem randomly assembled -- it doesn't necessarily build -- but the content is rich and effective, from the briefest of calls to the longest. But the true power of The Listener is the connection it establishes between Beth and her callers, the emotional power of these simple transactions. It's palpable and hard to resist. It's a great way to take a break from the noise of life and just...listen.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about The Listener 's violence . Can a movie be violent if no violence is actually shown, only described? Why, or why not?

How does the movie discuss sex or sex acts? What values are inherent?

How are drinking and drug use portrayed? Are they glamorized? Are there consequences? Why does that matter?

Do you consider Beth a positive role model for her ability to help some of her callers? Why, or why not?

Have you ever been able to help someone just by listening?

Movie Details

• In theaters : March 29, 2024
• On DVD or streaming : March 29, 2024
• Cast : Tessa Thompson , Rebecca Hall , Logan Marshall-Green
• Director : Steve Buscemi
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors, Latino actors
• Studio : Vertical
• Genre : Drama
• Character Strengths : Compassion
• Run time : 96 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : April 3, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

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Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.