Directed By Andy Serkis

Starring – Seth Rogen, Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson

The Plot – From visionary director Andy Serkis, and featuring the voices of Seth Rogen, Gaten Matarazzo, Glenn Close, and Woody Harrelson, comes a satirical allegory of revolution and power. Animal Farm traces how a movement for equality is systematically corrupted. As the pigs consolidate control, truth is erased, dissent is crushed, and the farm descends into a ruthless dictatorship-fulfilling Orwell’s warning about the dangers of communism.

Rated PG for thematic elements, some action/violence, rude humor and adult language.

Animal Farm – Official Trailer

POSITIVES

Despite this incarnation of Animal Farm being the single most obvious example of Orwellian foreshadowing, in terms of taking something so powerfully profound, and reshaping it to feel like any contemporary soulless kids movie, there are some spare instances of enticing effort permeating on-screen, between the performances and ridiculousness of the execution, that certainly makes this feel like a must-watch for anyone who grew up enamored by the novel, even if the opportunity to indulge upon its madness feels masochistic for anyone who enjoys putting themselves through torture of the most audaciously offensive variety. On the former, despite some obvious miscasting’s that require ample time to properly grow and stabilize within audience interpretation, the evidential energy and personality pertaining to this remarkable ensemble certainly help bring these characters to life with emotional vocalizing that simultaneously brings out the affectionate innocence and corrupt cantankerousness of their objectives, particularly Rogen, who after some initial reservations as the movie’s primary antagonist, Napoleon, settles into various deliveries that afford him the ample freedom to explore the dark depths of his character’s corroded morality, appraising naivety and especially narcissistic tendencies to a character defined by materialism. While Rogen’s annoying laugh is still unfortunately conjured in his various deliveries, it does serve a slimy seed that grows slithery under your skin, allowing him not only the effectiveness to revel in the cowardice of the role’s demands, but also a commanding presence that obviously feels geared towards a particular commander in chief. If anyone matches Rogen’s three-dimensionality on-screen, it’s definitely Stranger Things own, Gaten Matarazzo, who takes his single biggest leap forward as the film’s established protagonist, nurturing tenderness and innocence to the role of Lucky, while eventually serving as the film’s morality meter once elements of the farm start to feel direly bleak. Beyond the performances, while I have a litany of problems with this adaptation, boredom was never one of them, as not only does Orwell’s original story beats attain an overwhelming urgency that refuses to linger, but also features limitlessly daring chances with the material that at least represents the fearless approach in Serkis’ opportunistic exploits, eliciting a film that grows all the more bafflingly bizarre with each passing minute. Regardless of how you feel about the film, Serkis’ refusal to materialize a beat-for-beat rendering of the material is clearly evident in the way he contemporarily recontextualizes what he pulls from his own unique experiences reading the book, and while it unfortunately didn’t always shape out to feel as smoothly seamless as he might’ve expected, it’s simply unforgettable in its finished product, deserving of many of future rewatches with friends, where the alcoholic drinks are always at an arm’s reach.

NEGATIVES

If you ever seek to understand the tastelessly tacky relationship between an artist’s art and the studios that unfortunately inherit them, look no further than this incarnation of Animal Farm, a film so clumsily executed and perceptively obtuse that you not only understand how this version of the film sat in development Hell for over fourteen years, but also question just how in the Hell a movie this strangely surreal found its way to a cinematic release, at the same time when ambitious complete movies are being shelved completely, in order to never see the light of day. While the problems are regretfully limitless with Serkis’ reimagining, the biggest among them feels like the opportunistic objective to shift the story from a scathing sociological satire on totalitarian governments, to this toothlessly barebones exploit against capitalism, particularly the ways it blesses the rich while eating away at the poor. While I don’t exactly have a problem with the switch, as I myself have always had a litany of issues with the capitalistic societal model, here it’s dissected in the most blandly obvious and unoriginal ways that a million other films before it have satirically spoofed, in which those two aforementioned classes fit snuggly into the categorizing that the movie ultimately requires out of them, with very little depth or psychology to the development of its characters. The sad thing is that the film ultimately cannot commit itself to the established objective of pointing out the flaws of its societal system, as a result of a tacked-on climax of the movie, which conveniently alleviates its systematic conflicts with the single most hypocritical resolution that I’ve perhaps ever seen in a film exploiting it, leaving the doomsday scenarios that feel so evidently close to those involved in them, feeling like a surmised scrape from a fall on a sidewalk, as a means of refusing to send the audience home disturbed or even slightly reminded of the very same problems that persist outside of the theater of protection. Speaking of that artificial feeling of ease, the film’s complete tonal channeling clashes frequently with the darkly dire material that it arduously accompanies, in turn undercutting the effective magnitude of the comedic material, which certainly isn’t anything special in the first place. While it should come as no surprise to anyone that my earned laughter pertained to one single punchline in the litany of the script’s measurable advances, what does feel morally irreprehensible alongside Orwell’s profoundly invigorating writing, is the repeated usage of crude toilet humor of the most desperately vulgar variety, with nothing in the way of accidental cleverness or spontaneity in the articulation of its actions. This is where the film feels most synonymous with kids movies of the contemporary age, as not only does it dumb down the gags to feeling like a series of effortlessly digestible actions that can merely be judged on sounds alone, but also demeans a majority of the characters into feeling like one-dimensional types, instead of vital roles in the farm’s bigger picture, helping to comprehend with this horrendously hemmed brand of storytelling that transpired with the fluidity of a top-speed locomotive, without anything in the way of meticulous development to make the transpired events feel believable in their abrupt context. When I heard that Serkis was planning an unconventional adaptation to one of my all-time favorite novels, I was hoping for more interpretive expansion that included the downtime moments between the story’s bigger plot points, but instead Serkis not only includes almost everything from the novel, without the means to properly flesh them out, but also leaves every character outside of Napoleon and Lucky feeling like they only serve a purpose to continuously move the plot forward, and while that might be fine for a kids movie with the depth of a white crayon, for an Orwell adaption, it’s simply unfulfilling and imbalanced of the preconceived expectations that I had for such a socially-vital story pertaining to the cautionary tale of our continued self-demise, with nothing in the way of subtlety or even spectacle to at least fool me into utilizing my brain for deeper conversations. Speaking of spectacle, even the film’s technical components, primarily its animated techniques, simply cannot muster mesmerizing designs to maintain my attention, featuring some of the most lifelessly dull and undetailed designs that I’ve seen since the original incarnation of Microsoft Paint. To be fair, I would never have the ignorance to compare this to the limitless budgets of Pixar or Laika, but even on an Angel Studios perspective, the motions of the characters involved feel far too lagging to even respond seamlessly smooth to the compromised frame rates of its established visual execution, allowing scenes to slow abruptly for no good reason, when the mouth movements of the characters often don’t sync up synthetically with the dialogue that its ensemble are constantly shoveling out. If this isn’t enough, the film also incorporates one of my least favorite gimmicks in cinema, where it utilizes the overhead narration of a character to convey motivation to characters that it doesn’t have the time or concern to execute itself. This isn’t necessarily a problem if the gimmick serves to flesh out the introspective psychology of its characters, but it’s brutally blundered contextually on the ways its narration is framed and staged, both within the storytelling of an already deceased character in real-time, whose death would make it impossible for him to talk directly to the audience in past-tense, as well as an extending elaboration on that initial narration’s framing, which is then told from an entirely different character’s perspective, more than midway through the film, who utilizes that deceased character’s narration in the context of his own memories. To make this easy to understand, it would be like me telling a story based on my own experiences, but doing it from a friend’s perspective. What is even the point of this? Was this a means of a post-productive rewrite of what was initially conceived? There’s even far greater proof of a post-production influence during the movie’s post-movie credits, where remarkably and audaciously, the film attempts a sense of humor by asking the audience what they thought of the movie, with two QR codes shown on screen that require the audience to click one or the other, as a means of conveying if they enjoyed or hated the movie, in so many words. While I give my respect to Angel Studios for allowing their audience the opportunity to speak out, it feels like they’re entirely self-aware of what took shape here, especially since the options are so extreme from one side of the opinionated spectrum to the other, and considering the hated side basically takes you to a screen to convey that you’re wrong for your opinion, it’s the final backhanded assault that this movie has on your sagging senses, serving as the single biggest reminder that you wasted your time, money, and energy towards giving it a chance, with echoed emphasis stemming from those involved, who made the ultimate sacrifice to their respective careers.

OVERALL
Animal Farm is a watered down and distortedly delusional contemporary rendering to the George Orwell novel of the same name, sacrificing the satirical sting of the once powerfully political and allegorical exploits of totalitarianism, in favor of a kid-friendly framing that eviscerates all of the poignancy and fearlessness of Orwell’s prophetically bleak outlook. Beyond the muck of artificially attainable sentiments and lifelessly lagging animation, the film ultimately lacks the power of the punch that leaves audiences disturbed by the glaring similarities of their own crumbling-at-the-seams society, instead balancing expectations with enough situational convenience and toilet humor to convey that not all Orwellian adaptations are created equal

My Grade: 2.2 or F