Andy Serkis had the right idea in mind with adapting George Orwell’s grim political allegory, Animal Farm, for today’s society. It could be argued that every generation could use a version of this story, updated to reflect the climate of the moment. And certainly, the political climate today is fraught, chaotic, and downright despairing, so the timing is right. Orwell’s book, with its cute anthropomorphic talking animals and heavy themes of Marxism, socialism, and fascism, went a long way in sparking my interest in politics at a young age, as I’m sure it did for millions of others. Serkis is attempting to do the same thing with his movie, but this poorly animated, Hollywood fairy tale adaptation just wasn’t the right approach.
I liked this idea better when it was going to be done in performance capture, where Serkis is beyond reproach. Animal Farm, as it stands now, does not look very good at all. It doesn’t need to resemble the stunning, vibrant work of Pixar, Dreamworks, or Sony. But there’s no consistency to the lackluster visuals, with some scenes (many of them featuring the workhorse, Boxer) looking shoddier than the rest.
The basic gist of the story remains the same. Orwell’s book is an allegory of the Russian Revolution, and centers on a group of farm animals that rebel against their lazy, alcoholic human owner. They take over the farm for themselves and set out to build a utopia, only for it to fall into ruin when the pigs gain power, force out any rivals, and begin exploiting the other animals, to the point that the pigs become indistinguishable from the human oppressors. It’s incredibly dark, complicated stuff, and Orwell never spoke down to the readers, trusting them to draw the connections themselves.
Serkis’ Animal Farm mostly holds true to major plot points, albeit in a kiddie-friendly way that undercuts the serious themes it presents. For instance, there’s the introduction of Lucky (voiced by Stranger Things’ Gaten Matarazzo), a young pig, gifted with the ability to read, who becomes the audience surrogate character. He’s caught between the revolutionary, Trotsky-esque pig Snowball (Laverne Cox), and Napoleon (Seth Rogen), a charismatic, Trump-ian boar who is like one of Rogen’s stoner characters if they were despotic. Woody Harrelson voices the poor, tragic workhorse, Boxer, whose naivete goes far in leading all of the animals on a dystopic path.
The bad guys are a lot easier to spot in Serkis’ movie, too. Glenn Close voices Freida Pilkington, an evil Elon Musk-esque billionaire looking to cheat the animals out of their Animal Farm, and willing to corrupt the easily corruptible Napoleon to do it. Humans are almost universally awful, barely intelligible, and represent all of the worst aspects of capitalism. These aren’t bad ideas in and of themselves. Setting Animal Farm in a modern context makes sense, and it’s undeniable that Napoleon would be just as cruel and conniving as Trump if in the White House. But Nicholas Stoller’s script, perhaps because of the clear desire to tell a story for all ages, is thinly drawn and fails to show the stark reality of such tyrannical rule. The real-world stakes just don’t feel adequate. Serkis changes a few of the story details, but it’s tough to see how they actually make things better.
To hammer home this point, Serkis’ Animal Farm refashions Orwell’s gut-punch finale with a much happier one, where good clearly wins over evil. Well, at least that’s the case if you don’t bother watching through the credits, which suggest that tyranny will always rise again. There will always be those who fight against it; sometimes they’ll win, sometimes they’ll lose. But ultimately, it’s a never-ending cycle. If Serkis’ point was to inform the next generation of political activists to fight the good fight, then what’s the point in telling them it’s all pointless, anyway?
Angel Studios releases Animal Farm in theaters on May 1st.
