When Lois Lowry’s The Giver came out in 1993, its story of a repressive post-apocalyptic dystopia in the context of the setting for a young-adult novel was a fresh idea. But now, in a media landscape dominated by such stories (seriously, half of all YA books now are survivalist, post-apocalyptic, dystopian, or some combination of the three), The Giver looks quite standard. And that’s a huge problem for its new film adaptation.

Like John Carter, the film of The Giver comes in the wake of a slew of works inspired by its source material; as a result, its groundbreaking elements look derivative. The look of the high-tech dictatorship seems straight out of the Capitol from The Hunger Games. A ceremony in which teenagers are given the jobs they will hold for life will make viewers think of the reaping from Hunger Games, or the choosing ceremony from Divergent, or even the Sorting Hat scenes of Harry Potter. The fact that this story came before any of those doesn’t exonerate this movie from trying to be aesthetically distinct. Nothing about The Giver is the least bit visually engaging.

But it’s likely that, even if The Giver had managed to make it into theaters before its imitators, it wouldn’t be anything special. Its story comes in the least intriguing form of rebellion against authority possible. In this future, planned communities that have risen from the ashes of a civilization-destroying war have eliminated conflict by embracing “Sameness,” a Brave New World-ish system in which all emotion is medically suppressed. Young Jonas (Brenton Thwaites) is chosen to become a “receiver,” one who is allowed the ability to feel so he can obtain all knowledge of the time before Sameness, in case it is ever needed. The Giver (Jeff Bridges) is the old receiver, now tasked with psychically passing everything he knows on to Jonas. Naturally, all this causes Jonas to question Sameness, and he eventually threatens the stability of the whole system.

Here’s the thing about dystopian stories: if they don’t in some way reflect the authoritarianism of real-world situations, there’s not much of a point to them. No regime in history has reigned by tamping down on emotion. It’s just the opposite, in fact — dictatorships are usually very good at exploiting their populaces’ . Even on an allegorical level, The Giver doesn’t work. There’s no message other than “emotions are good,” which is spectacularly non-controversial. There’s not even a warning to be found about how technology or what have you can alienate us from true feeling.

The only way that The Giver could have said something truly interesting would have been to try to make the viewer interrogate the role of emotion in our lives. The communities are repressive, to be sure, but also incredibly safe for their inhabitants; a better movie would have made us think about how emotion and irrationality are linked, and the destructive potential therein. The leader of Jonas’ community (a wasted Meryl Streep) claims at the end that “When people are given a choice, they choose wrong,” and a braver film would have given that some consideration. Because, well, she’s not wrong.

The Giver instead indulges its “we must feel” thesis in a manner that’s very much “all the feels.” The blasts of emotion and memory that the Giver sends into Jonas come in the form of brief clips of random human activities, many of which are repurposed parts of viral videos. A toddler laughs in the rain, a man flies in a wingsuit, a couple gets married, and so on and so forth. It’s blunt, graceless button-pushing, a positively Upworthy-ish method.

Not only that, but these flashes constitute the majority of the presence that people of color have in the film. Part of Sameness is eliminating race, but since race is apparently literal skin color and not a social construct, this is a future made almost entirely of white people. Seeing Jonas delight in the memories of a wedding from an Asian culture comes across as the strangest form of appropriation to emerge yet. Past experiences from all over the world are now held within and passed between white people. Joy.

The only thing that’s interesting and original about The Giver is its positive depiction of “maternal” behavior in men. Jonas’ father (Alexander Skarsgård) works in the community nursery, and Jonas inherits his gift for working with babies. Part of Jonas’ emotional development sees him growing attached to Gabriel, a baby whom his family is fostering because his colicky nature makes him a potential target for “release” from the community. In one scene, Jonas tells Gabe he loves him, and it’s hard to think of the last time a male character in a film said that to a child he wasn’t related to. That the film is unafraid to embrace the full spectrum of human emotion, and not confine itself to stereotypical roles, is probably its most laudable quality. It even puts Jonas’ mother (Katie Holmes) in the job of the community’s head of security.

There’s also a romance in The Giver, but it’s as uninteresting as any other YA romance you can think of, which is yet another way in which it fades into the whir of samey-lit adaptation franchises we’re currently bracing through (although at least there’s not a love triangle). It’s true that the film is a long labor of love for Bridges, who also produced it, but that love doesn’t come across much on screen. There’s a certain level of sincerity in it, for sure, but the way it manifests seems oddly cynical in how forced it is. Despite its anti-authoritarian themes, this is a thoroughly corporate product.

Oh, also, Taylor Swift is in a few scenes, and it’s weird and distracting.

Grade: C-