Animal Farm review: Family-friendly reimagining is hit and miss
George Orwell‘s famous 1945 novella Animal Farm has been adapted for the screen twice before, and now it’s getting another in the form of Andy Serkis‘s long-gestating passion project.
The animation takes place on Manor Farm, which is renamed Animal Farm after the animals rebel against the humans and run the place by themselves. They think they’ve achieved freedom, no longer having humans to rule over them, and make a list of rules, the most important being “all animals are equal”. However, Napoleon (voiced by Seth Rogen) doesn’t like Snowball’s (Laverne Cox) sensible ideas for storing food and making electricity and overthrows her leadership, declaring that pigs are the ruling class of the farm. Under his rule, the farm ends up being the same as before, except with pigs in charge instead of humans.
Orwell’s novella was a political allegory for the Russian Revolution and Stalinism, but this watered-down, family-friendly version is more about corruption, capitalism and autocracies in general. While it’s not specifically about Trump, you can easily draw parallels between him and Napoleon. The story is still as powerful, relevant and resonant as ever and shows children how money corrupts, how the working class are made to work hard for little reward and how it’s one rule for the leaders, another for everyone else.
Serkis has created a new character, Lucky (Gaten Matarazzo), a cute piglet torn between the teachings of Snowball and Napoleon. He’s a good way into the story and a sympathetic character the audience can relate to. Through him, we see how young, impressionable people can be easily morally corrupted by charismatic leaders, and how conflicted he is by the pigs vs animals situation. Alongside the core cast of Napoleon, Snowball and fellow pig Squealer (Kieran Culkin) plus Boxer the horse (Woody Harrelson) and Benjamin the donkey (Kathleen Turner), there are a bunch of new characters including Carl the Sheep (Jim Parsons), Randolph the rooster (Serkis) and evil human Freida Pilkington (Glenn Close), a character inspired by Mr. Frederick and Mr. Pilkington from the novella.
Animal Farm has received a lot of criticism for dumbing down or making light of the story, but I think there’s nothing wrong with making this important cautionary tale more accessible, digestible and easygoing for children and for adding a completely new third act that has more action and a hopeful ending. The core message is still there, but the film never gets too dark, despite the dystopian plot.
However, the film has a lot of issues, namely the screenplay. Nicholas Stoller, known for excellent projects such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Bros, has written a comedy that is truly not funny. Perhaps it’ll get a couple of laughs out of the kids, but it’s quite cringeworthy at times, such as when it resorts to toilet humour, or Napoleon decides to call himself “Napopo”.
The pigs are also humanised and modernised a bit too much. From walking on two legs and drinking whisky in the novella, they’re now buying phones, TVs, sound systems and fast cars. Why do pigs need cars and tech?! It goes rather overboard on humanising the pigs. I also wasn’t a huge fan of the song choices or the animation style, however, I can appreciate that an independent animation was never going to look as polished as films from Pixar or Illumination, for example.
Animal Farm is a tonally messy coming-of-age story (not a comedy) starring a cute piglet. It may not be as hard-hitting as the source material, but the core message remains intact and is delivered to a younger audience in a palatable way.
Animal Farm is in UK & Ireland cinemas 24th July, with previews on the 18th & 19th