The Giver

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

Noyce tries to thread the needle by hewing close to his source material while peppering in some grander-scale sci-fi business to keep things moving. It doesn't remotely work.

The fatal irony at the heart of The Giver is too hilariously blatant to ignore: here is a dystopian teen drama about the perils of sameness that feels exactly like all of the other movies in its increasingly crowded genre.

It's an intelligent, accomplished, unpadded thriller, and one suitable for the children.

It just looks like a low-rent mishmash of Divergentand The Hunger Games, recycling riffs from Logan's Run with sets and costumes lifted from Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey.

The Giver is a solid, soft sci-fi entertainment with plenty of talented folks attached.

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

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

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

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.