The “haunting” story of The Giver hails from what librarians classify as the young readers section, a celebrated 1994 book by Lois Lowry, and feels like it.  A bland inversion of The Truman Show where pretty much everyone -- save Meryl Streep, playing a Big Sister, husky-voiced Elder to no great effect, and Jeff Bridges, as the society’s keeper of memories, the “Giver” -- lives a uniform, unruffled, nearly pathologically colorless life. Sameness is the order of the day. The set design and scheme of the Phillip Noyce (Patriot Games, 1992; Clear and Present Danger, 1994; Rabbit-Proof Fence, 2002; Salt 2010) film is stripped of vibrant color and ‘edge’ for its depressed-affect population until handsome teen Jonas (Brenton Thwaites), under the tutelage of The Giver’s (Jeff Bridges, hoarier than usual) transferred societal memories, emerges into the light of self-awareness. He also, by virtue of these tactile transfers, gains...(Read Full Article)