Movie Review: Animal Farm

Welcome back one and all to the final review of the week, this time featuring Andy Serkis’ Animal Farm.

Spoilers are to follow, so if for some reason you’re really excited for this movie and have no idea what happens, proceed with caution!

Alright, Animal farm follows much of the same beats as the book, with farm animals rising up to overthrow their cruel farmer, only for a pig named Napoleon to rise to power, become a dictator, undo the good of their uprising, and ultimately be overthrown by the other animals. The story does differ a bit from the book though, as our main protagonist is an idealistic pig named Lucky, who is initially hesistant to join Napoleon, but then joins his ranks, realizes the error of his ways, and rejoins the other animals to defeat Napoleon. Additionally, a megacorporation headed by a vague evil CEO is part of the story, but their involvement is more so just used as a device to move the plot forward and give Napoleon gifts, and their main aspiration in relation to the story is to build a dam on the farm. But you get the gist here, it’s mostly the book, with some fart jokes (literally), and unfulfilled plot points scattered across the runtime.

Alright, with that out of the way, let’s get into my thoughts. To put it plainly, this movie sucked, and this movie sucked hard.

Aninal Farm 2026 is in my opinion, devoid of anything even remotely interesting, unique, or worth talking about, which is a damn shame considering the source material is incredibly influential, and has had a strong and lasting impact on culture and societal studies.

On the topic of the book, this movie treats its plot points and themes as more of a chore to be crossed off a checklist, than anything actually worth discussing. It seems obvious that the writers, producers, etc., were more interested in making a movie where a talking pig voiced by Seth Rogen makes gastrointestinal jokes, and because of this, everytime a major book moment or plot point was reached, it felt like the movie paused, let out an enormous sigh, and said, “Fine, here you go, the thing from the book…but with that out of the way here’s another fart joke!”.

Obviously this was incredibly disappointing, and all I could think is why not just make a movie about talking animals on a farm? Why did this have to be based off Animal Farm?

Another thing I despised was the evil megacorporation. Now don’t worry, this isn’t the prelude to me defending Fortune 500 companies, but what I hated about this was that this was a real opportunity to bring Animal Farm to a modern day lens, and discuss and dissect how massive corporations are buying land with the sole purpose of enriching themselves and driving up prices, but this movie entirely shys away from that, and the evil CEO/company are just used to give Napoleon fancy cars and a podium to speak.

This is incredibly disappointing, and I’m not sure how this opportunity was missed, because this seems like incredibly low hanging fruit. Truly mind boggling.

Outside of the boring and obnoxiously bad plot, the other cardinal sin this movie commits is doing nothing special with its animation, and at times looking pretty bad. This isn’t the worst animation you’ll ever see, but it’s nothing special, not particularly interesting or appealing to look at, and it tried to do nothing new or unique.

As for voice acting, the majority are not terrible, but Glenn Close is doing an atrociously annoying performance, and I don’t even know the inspiration or meaning behind her voice work. It’s hard to describe, but if I had to compare her performance to anything, it would be a cross between Doctor Evil, and a late 19th century oil tycoon. Evertyime her character was on the screen, I wished I had earplugs in, and I have hard time believe everyone else in my theatre felt any differently. As for the rest of the cast, again, they weren’t terrible, but the common element of bland nothingness once again presented itself in their performances.

Honestly, there’s nothing good to say about this movie. It’s bland, boring, entirely unoriginal, it shys away from anything even remotely hard hitting or important, and it treats the source material as something to check off a list rather than as something to be explored through a modern day or new perspective.

Because of all this, I rated Animal Farm as 1 1/2 stars on Letterboxd, I do not recommend seeing this, and I sure as hell did not give it a like.

Looking Ahead

Well that’s over with (thank God). Honestly, Animal Farm may be one of my least favorite movies of the year. It’s tough, because the lows (Mercy, The Strangers Chapter 3), are so low, but this was incredibly bad.

Looking ahead to next week, on Monday I’ll publish my review of Mortal Kombat II, and then The Sheep Detective will follow on Wednesday.

My fingers are crossed that Mortal Kombat will be good, but I’ve been burned by video game movies before, so we’ll have to wait and see on that one.

Outside of that, I did see Mother Mary and Deep Water, but I’m going to shelve those for now, and I’ll publish their reviews the final week of May when I’m on vacation.

In the meantime, there’s plenty of new movies coming out, which means you’ll see plenty more from me soon!