Internationally famous novel “The Giver,” written by Lois Lowry in 1993, premiered on the big screen Aug. 15 with high expectations from the viewers.

The movie starts off with the narration of the protagonist Jonas, played by the 24-year-old Brenton Thwaites, giving the viewer the perspective of a “perfect” utopia. The community, as it is called, supplies daily injections to rid citizens of their emotions shown through color for avoidance of sadness or envy for the idea of equality. Their families, their jobs, and even their language was all given to them. To help the people’s future, jobs are given during the Graduation of the Twelves. Jonas is one of the said Twelves whose life will be decided.

Jonas is carefully selected to be the Receiver of memories for the community. Not really knowing what he is getting himself into, Jonas meets the previous Receiver, now known as the Giver, played by Jeff Bridges. Jonas is shown the memories of happiness, family, love and pain. Not being able control all these new found emotions, Jonas tries to share the memories and the color they’ve been deprived of with his long time crush, Fiona, played by Odeya Rush.

With a run time of an hour and 37 minutes long, “The Giver” initially looks like a sturdy movie with an A-list cast, which includes Oscar award winning actress, Meryl Streep. Sadly, this only true for someone who hadn’t read the book.

There were multiple flaws in the film, which the 12 million person fan base for the novel would agree on. Jonas in the novel is 11-years-old, whereas in the film Jonas is 16-years-old. Even ignoring the similarities between this movie and the movie adaption of Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games”, the film has removed important parts in the original novel that stimulated readers to reflect on themselves and society.

However, if you can look past the small mistakes here and there, you see that this movie is visually stunning. It follows the main plotline found in the novel, including pulling quotes directly from Lowry’s pages. The purpose of this movie is to encourage viewers to rekindle the love we have for our world and to look past all the horrible things we confront in our lives. Despite a few shortcomings, “The Giver” movie stays true to the message of Lowry’s 1993 bestseller: that we need to see how much the world gives us, even if we can’t.