Full disclosure: Animal Farm, by George Orwell, is one of my favorite books. For all the fretting about banned books in America (which is bullshit because anyone claiming such-and-such book is banned can easily purchase it on Amazon), you could literally be jailed or worse if someone catches you reading this book in North Korea. The Stalinist hellhole banned it because (suprise) the Dear Leader disliked its warning about communism.
The book chronicles a barnyard animal revolution to seize control of a farm where everyone can live in a utopia. Then Napolean the pig takes over and the farm devolves into modern-day Pyongyang. If that doesn’t scream animated children’s movie, nothing does.
Enter Andy Serkis of Lord of the Rings fame to direct a “reimagined” computer-animated version of Orwell’s cautionary tale. Whenever you see “reimagined” slapped on a famous story, run. And that applies to this flick, which, surprisingly didn’t receive an Oscar nomination for best animated film. I thought it was a shoe-in because Serkis stripped communism from Animal Farm as an evil ideology and replaced it with capitalism (insert foreboding music here).
Not only did this completely neuter the entire point behind Animal Farm, it allowed Hollywood press people to write insufferable nonsense like “(Napoleon’s) desperation to belong among ruthless human billionaires and their cyberpunk-esque vehicles strikes close to home in 2025.” Good lord.
Stripping Stalinism as the corrupting force from Animal Farm is like reimagining The Silence of the Lambs with a vegan Hannibal Lecter. I’ve not seen Serkis’s idiotic take on Orwell’s classic, nor will I. The film had a limited screening in 2025 and will receive a wider release this year. If the reviews I could find are any indication, it’ll be out of the theaters faster than you can say “four legs good, two legs bad.”
Here’s a line from the Variety review: “… but the message feels muddled amid all the pratfalls and fart jokes.”
Yeah, that’s exactly what Animal Farm needs to appeal to a modern audience. Fart jokes.