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.

Where other films shout, 'The Giver' whispers. It's not a perfect adaptation of Lowry's provocative novel but it is boldly faithful; a mostly thoughtful vision of utopia gone awry.