Jeff Bridges and the rest of us have been waiting for more than 20 years for the film version of this original young adult dystopian future saga, which long preceded (and perhaps inspired) The Hunger Games and the Divergent franchises. It seems “The Dude” has been trying to make this movie for two decades, with his father, Lloyd Bridges in mind for the title role. The project took so long to bring to fruition that Jeff himself stepped in to take the lead.

It’s really quite the let down, then, to hear Bridges distractingly mumbling his lines as if he has a huge wad of chew tucked into his lower lip. Why the affectation? But he’s not alone in his misdirection. The cast is full of able but underused favorites like Meryl Streep (in a truly awful iron gray wig), Katie Holmes, Alexander Skarsgaard (Eric on Trueblood), Cameron Monaghan (Ian Gallaghar on Shameless) and Taylor Swift, for a few decent seconds. In the lead as Jonas is relative newcomer Brenton Thwaites, whom you may remember as Prince Phillip in Maleficent. He does an admirable job of playing the innocent who wises up fast when he’s selected to be the receptacle of his entire community’s memories.

I blame Aussie director Phillip Noyce, the helmer of  thrillers like Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Bone Collector and Salt for the mismanagement of this adaptation. Mostly shot on sets in South Africa that look like green screen stages in Burbank, what’s not computer generated looks like it’s made of cardboard. There are plenty of smarmy baby shots and leaps of logic that are incredibly far-fetched. In many ways, it reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode rather than a major motion picture. Perhaps that was the idea, and I’ll say this for it — the film does feel stylish.

So The Giver is not entirely without its virtues. Screenwriters Michael Mitnick and Robert B. Weide did an admirable job of adapting and updating Lois Lowry’s Nebula Award winning book so that it still feels futuristic, and even more relevant to today’s audiences, by adjusting Jonas’s age upward and adding a touch of romance. It’s tough to add emotional heft to a story about people largely protected from emotional heft. But after 20 years in the making, you’d think filmmakers could have come up with something a little more substantial. Heaven knows the genre is hot right now. I just wished the story-telling could have been sparked up a bit.

Rated PG 13

97 Minutes