Animal Farm

Family films are a tricky business. Finding the right balance of whimsy and meaningful conflict to titillate children without alienating parents eludes most filmmakers. For every Incredibles, there are three Ruby Gillman, Teenage Krakens.

George Orwell's anti-communism allegory about farm animals whose society is shattered by a power-hungry dictator may not be the best foundation on which to build a fun Saturday night with the family. The source material relies heavily on dark themes, such as murder and intimidation, to drive the story, and it certainly doesn't have a happy ending.

That said, in an attempt to jazz up and soften the corners of a story usually reserved for high school freshmen and make it more palatable for much younger audiences, director Andy Serkis (Gollum in The Lord of the Rings) and writer Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) have lost the thread. Instead of providing audiences with a dark and nuanced warning about the dangers of revolution or a bouncy tale for kiddos that sprinkles in just enough of the human condition to also engage adults, the duo gives us a grating juxtaposition of fart humor and totalitarian oppression that scrape against one another like fingernails on a chalkboard.

No amount of Seth Rogan's sad and desperate, THC-infused laughter can make up for the incongruity of the story or its poor execution. Farmer Jones's cruelty is reduced to a footnote rather than a proper tool for engendering empathy towards the beleaguered barnyard animals, and all hope of emotionally connecting with the stalwart, true-footed Boxer is left to Woody Harrelson's horrifically slow, sappy vocal performance. So much time is spent on extraneous elements that the core tale is all but lost.

In Serkis and Stroller's reimagining of the classic, the collective no longer shares the role of protagonist. Rather, a new character, a young and impressionable pig named Lucky, shoulders the burden as he sides with whatever strong personality dominates the narrative at any given time. But his overcoming his waffling cowardice is a weak substitute for developing an affinity between the audience and an oppressed group of lovable innocents. Instead of rooting for the barnyard's emancipation from Napoleon, much of the film focuses on Lucky's unease at being manipulated by the flash and glamor of Rogen's party lifestyle. It's vacuous and self-indulgent, but worst of all, it makes the key narrative into an afterthought, a motivational tool for Lucky's self-reflection rather than the driving force of the story.

So too, in the original, Napoleon relied heavily on the threat of force from his loyal pack of dogs to keep the workforce in line. While there is some hint of this in the film, it has been softened to such a family-safe degree that it becomes narratively meaningless. Once starvation and desperation begin to take hold in the barnyard, there is no longer a convincing reason for the animals not to rise up against their oppressors.

Worst of all, this neuters Napoleon himself, reducing him to a weak cartoon version, the irony is not lost, of the despotic dictator he was in the original. By sidelining the animals’ collective suffering in favor of a single character’s moral dilemma, the film loses its backbone. What was once a sharp and unsettling warning is flattened into an overly simplistic “greed is bad” morality tale.

Less interesting, but still notable, the visuals are atrocious. Cinesite, the team responsible for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Mayhem, has delivered a shockingly poorly rendered film with animation that barely belongs in a PS1 cutscene. There's nothing imaginative in its design and no spark behind the flat, lifeless eyes of its characters.

At its core, Animal Farm is not a story that lends itself to soft edges or easy laughs. It is cynical, uncomfortable, and deliberately so. Sanding it down to make it more accessible does not broaden its appeal; it guts it. What remains is a confused film that cannot decide who it is for or what it wants to say.

Children will find little to latch onto beyond the occasional juvenile gag, and adults familiar with the source material will be left wondering why it was adapted at all if this was the end result. In trying to split the difference, Serkis and Stoller land nowhere.

The tragedy is that there was a path forward. Lean into the darkness and trust the audience, or fully commit to a reimagining that earns its lighter tone. Instead, Animal Farm settles for neither, abandoning what made the original compelling without offering anything meaningful in its place.