By Nick Nitkowski

“Animal Farm” is a classic cautionary tale that was written by George Orwell back in 1945. And if you had the chance to read it, then you know that it has a lot of dark material within its pages. One could easily see that it is not geared towards children. At least not children of this era. I’m not sure what things were like back in 1945. Much to my surprise, as I’m sure was a surprise to all, a new CGI animated feature film adaptation of the story with the same name was being made by none other than Andy Serkis! But once the trailer was released, nobody liked what they saw. But that’s just a trailer. Surely, the movie itself can stand on its own four legs and carry itself as it’s clearly standing on the shoulders of a classic story. What could possibly go wrong?

For those of you who might not be familiar with the story, “Animal Farm”, is about a group of various barnyard animals to rise against their farmer after they learn that they’re being sent to a slaughter house. At which point, the animals form their own society with strict rules to follow to make things fair for each animal. But soon, the pigs start to gain more and more power by breaking the rules. A metaphorical telling of our own society on how much corruption and greed for a small percent can cause an unfair imbalance for the rest. It’s practically tailor-made for families, right?

So how was the movie? It’s not good. It is very clear right from the start that this version is watered down to an infuriating degree. While some things stayed the same to the source material, the darker stuff is either vaguely hinted at or done off camera just to cater to children. They don’t even use the word “alcohol” in the film. Instead, they use the term “naughty juice” which somehow sounds worse. They even add a new character that’s not in the original book. For what reason exactly, I’m not sure.

The animation style is just kind of whatever. It’s nowhere near the Disney PIXAR level of animation style. Nor is it on Dreamworks level of animation style. Hell, I think Illumination’s animation looks better than this. Yes, those annoying Minions look better than everything in “Animal Farm”. I’d say at the very best, the animation style here is mediocre. But of course, since this story is now made for children, they’ll simply be captivated by the talking CGI animals. It’s doesn’t take much to please children when it comes to animated movies as “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” has proven.

I was very surprised to see how much of an all-star cast this movie had. This movie contains the voice talents of Gaten Matarazzo from “Stranger Things”, Seth Rogen, Woody Harrelson, Steven Buscemi, Glenn Close, Kieran Culkin, Jim Parsons, Andy Serkis, and more. But with all of these voice actors, I can’t say that any of them stood out in this film. Seth Rogan does what you’d expect with his voice, and everyone else is just doing their thing. And whatever attempt at humor they tried to pull off was practically non-existent. Much like the movie itself, the performances within are not very memorable.

Needless to say, if you saw the trailer for “Animal Farm” and your reaction towards it was negative, it is completely justified. This movie would have been a lot better if it was a dark telling of the story that was more adult oriented, like the original source material intended. It’s hard to say if that was the original plan before Angel Studios decided to take over and distribute it and therefore watering down the story in an attempt to make more ticket sales from younger audiences, but if someone were to tell me that that is exactly what happened, I would not be surprised in the least. Andy Serkis is no stranger to the director’s chair, but this movie just missed the mark completely, and I seriously doubt that anyone will enjoy this adaptation. I’m looking forward to seeing this pig of a film inevitably get roasted on the internet. Let’s just hope Andy Serkis does better at the helm of “The Hunt for Gollum” because this movie needs to go straight to the glue factory.

1 star