Crime Wave (1954)

The animals gathered around in confusion: they seemed to remember that, originally, Animal Farm had been a gloomy allegory for the Russian Revolution of 1917 and its eventual downwards spiral into despotism. They brought this concern to Squealer, who assured them that they were misremembering; that Animal Farm was always a children’s film about overconsumption, and that this nasty rumor was almost certainly spread by Snowball and his cohorts in an attempt to overthrow their precious Angel Studios. Squealer assured them that their glorious leader Andy Serkis was handling the matter carefully. And then the pigs went and turned Boxer into popcorn buckets and used the profits from selling him to buy more whiskey.

Animal Farm comes to us from the studio that brought us David, Cabrini, and Sound of Freedom, among other movies that are very much not Animal Farm. The concept for this movie sounds like a fever dream on several levels. For example, it’s an animated film starring Seth Rogen and directed by Andy Serkis. Yes, Gollum himself is bringing George Orwell to the living rooms of grandparents of small children. This is not a dream; this is real life.

Turns out, the man who brought Caeser, Snoke, and King Kong to life is about as good at replicating Orwell as I was in the first paragraph of this review. But at least I tried to stick to the spirit of the original story. No such luck with 2026’s Animal Farm. This is egregious commercial slop.  This incarnation of Animal Farm is filled with the generic plot points, immature humor, cardboard characters and visual flaws that you have come to know from today’s lesser children’s films.