Review: Animal Farm brings an Orwell classic to a new audience, along with some fart jokes

Like most American high schoolers, I was assigned George Orwell's classic allegorical novella, Animal Farm, as a school reading assignment. I was (and I guess, still am) an English geek, so I tended to like the assigned reading, and Animal Farm was no exception. It's a lean and powerful tome, an imminently readable satire of the Russian Revolution. It's a classic, and a curriculum mainstay, for good reason.

It's also, perhaps, an unlikely bit of source material for a family movie, but here we are in 2026 welcoming a new cinematic take on the book that injects cartoony animal antics, pop song needle drops, and fart jokes into the mix. Director Andy Serkis has reworked Orwell to be more palatable, more Hollywood, and also to rhyme a bit more with the current political climate (you might see more Trump than Stalin in this version of Napoleon the pig). This is a movie where I'm not quite sure why it was made, or why it exists in this form. Adding to the overall strangeness is that it's being distributed by Angel Studios, the faith-based media company whose releases are always overtly Christian. Animal Farm feels like an odd match to them, though I'm glad someone took the reins after the film premiered to a tepid reception last year.

Maybe Serkis wanted to introduce the story to a younger audience instead of having them wait another decade to read it in school? Maybe he recognized the potential to pull a little silliness out of the premise, which at face value certainly has potential to be a family-friendly crowd-pleaser. Maybe he just wanted to take a stab at putting his spin on a bonafide canonical classic. I can only guess.

As strange as the various ingredients are, and as misguided as this take might be in some ways, I found myself pleasantly surprised with this version of Animal Farm. It speaks to the sturdy bones of the original work, rooted as they are in the sweep of actual historical events, that the story remains so stirring and infuriating, even as it's remixed in this unusual way. The balance of old and new is a bit wonky, but often works. This at least doesn't feel like a redundant take. And the Hollywood-ification of the ending, with a tacked-on third act that gives an optimistic sense of closure, perhaps speaks to the difficulty of adapting a political work in this time and age, when extremism is so virulent and viral, spreading like wildfire online and in the real world.

Many of the beats of the story remain more or less the same. The animals, led by the wise pig Snowball, take over their farm, seizing the means of production and working hard to provide for their community. They create a set of rules that are meant to keep the animals acting like animals. Don't live in the farmhouse, don't wear clothes, don't walk on two feet, don't drink "naughty juice." Most of the animals are fairly simple-minded, like the steadfast workhorse Boxer, and the gang of sheep who repeatedly bleat whatever they most recently heard. Life is good, even though the work of running the farm is hard. This is freedom.

Working in the shadows is the conniving Napoleon, who resents the sway Snowball has over the other animals, particularly the young pig Lucky, who is able to read and write. Napoleon operates in the shadows, sowing discord among the animals and eventually seizing power for himself. He gradually creates more definitive divisions on the farm, moving the pigs into the farmhouse and breaking the rules one by one, even allying with humans.

While I haven't read the book since high school, I remember it decently well, and remember the way it made me feel. And this adaptation often made me feel those same things: the sense of dread, the anger, the sorrow for the poorly treated animals. Serkis does a nice job of keeping the story intact despite the silly accoutrement that sometimes threaten to derail it, like the sometimes odd needle drops, or the sci-fi slant of the human world (drones, VR headsets, sleek cars). I imagine the futuristic designs of the human world are meant to show that the dangers inherent in this story are eternal. They were true when the Russian Revolution happened in the early twentieth century. They were true when the novella was published in the 1940s. They're true now, as we see the creeping influence of fascism on American shores. And they'll remain true when we have flying cars and all the other high-tech gadgets that we see on screen here.

Animal Farm is very proud of its celebrity cast, as evidenced in its trailers and even in its opening credits. The movie opens with the credits rolling over a scene of animal revolution, with freeze-frames on the various characters matching the names on-screen. On one hand, it feels a little desperate, but I also do like knowing who the voices are, and this cast is particularly starry: Glenn Close, Laverne Cox, Jim Parsons, Steve Buscemi, Kathleen Turner. The two highlights for me are Seth Rogen as Napoleon -- he warps his usually huh-huh-huh affable persona into something dark and dangerous -- and Woody Harrelson as Boxer, who beautifully captures the simple goodness of the working class, and serves as the film's narrator.

I will always wonder why this version of Animal Farm came to be, but meeting it where it's at, and looking at it for what it is, I find myself pretty happy with the end product. It might not be a bit toothless compared to its source material, but it's still an entertaining and pointed take. And hey, maybe a fart really is the sound of freedom.