'Animal Farm' Review
- Connor Petrey
- 53 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Release Date: 05/01/26 [Cinemas]
Genre: Adventure. Animation. Comedy. Drama. Family. Fantasy.
MPAA: Rated PG.
Distributor: Angel Studios.
The Verdict: A Mistake
Why does this movie exist?
That’s the question hanging over Andy Serkis’ new animated Animal Farm, a project with a stacked cast, a timely source text, and every reason to land like a bombshell. Instead, it mostly lands with a perplexing shrug.
Seriously, whose idea was it to make a PG-rated, family-friendly, fart-joke-infused version of George Orwell’s barnyard nightmare about power, corruption, and how quickly well-meaning revolutions rot from the inside? The film keeps reaching for humor in places that dull the punch of the material and, worse, it reaches for cheap humor. The laughs are not there. This thing is painfully unfunny.
The story follows a struggling farm that’s forced by evil capitalistic forces to shutter, only to be resurrected by the barnyard animals who used to be its main byproducts. In a broad metaphor for communism, the animals make a pact to stick together and share both the burden and the spoils. But, because we can’t have nice things, someone wants to game the system. And there are outside forces who want the farm for more nefarious purposes.
Seth Rogen voices Napoleon, the bad pig in the bunch. And sure, on paper, you get it. He has the persona, but the performance never amounts to much, and the script gives him very little to work with. Rogen feels less like a fully realized tyrant than like a celebrity voice dropped into the middle of the movie because the marketing department liked the sound of it. At times, it’s hard not to picture him alone in a booth, reading flat lines and then doing that familiar laugh into the dull void.
Woody Harrelson, as Boxer, may be the strangest piece of casting here. To his credit, he at least seems to be trying to do something beyond his usual speaking voice. Unfortunately, the choices are odd and, frankly, a little unpleasant. Boxer is supposed to be simple and tragic, a beast built to work until there’s nothing left. Harrelson actually sells that idea well enough, but he seems to be working in an entirely different movie than the rest of the cast.
Kieran Culkin probably comes off the best as Squealer, Napoleon’s obnoxious little sidekick and enforcer. Even then, it’s mostly just Culkin being Culkin, weaponizing that slippery, needling cadence he’s been perfecting for years.
Gaten Matarazzo, meanwhile, has to do most of the heavy lifting as Lucky, the movie’s young lead, and he gives it a real try. He does an admirable enough job as a plucky protagonist pig who wants to do good, but makes poor choices. In a better movie, he’d likely come off better. This isn’t the kid’s fault. The same can be said, to a lesser degree, for Iman Vellani, another charismatic young performer stuck orbiting material that never finds a real spark.
Two standouts are Kathleen Turner as Benjamin, who is honestly just cool to have around. There’s real pleasure in hearing that unmistakable rasp again. Along with Glenn Close, she brings some actual gravity to the proceedings.
Close, playing Frieda Pilkington, goes full scenery-chewing villain and sounds like she’s having the most fun of anyone in the cast. That energy helps. It doesn’t save the movie, but at least it gives it the occasional pulse.
And that’s the frustrating part: there is a ton of talent here, and almost all of it feels wasted.
The screenplay by Nicholas Stoller is as flat as a prairie field. Stoller has had some hits (The Muppets, Bros) and some misses (Muppets Most Wanted, Zoolander 2), and you can feel a studio clash all over this thing. Orwell’s savage political allegory keeps getting sanded down into something cuddlier, safer, and far less sharp than it should be. There’s a tonal mismatch here that feels like so many studio notes were passed around that, at some point, someone on the creative team just gave up, shrugged, and went home with another paycheck.
Capitalism!
It’s also hard not to wonder whether there was a clash somewhere in the making of this movie over who exactly the audience was supposed to be — and how old they were supposed to be. Is this for younger kids? Teens? Adults who know Orwell? Families who just want talking animals and a few gags? The film never seems to decide. That tension feels unresolved in nearly every scene, as if one version of the movie wanted to bite and another wanted to sell plush toys. The result is a tonal mess — a real shit soup of softened satire, broad jokes, and wasted potential.
With Serkis directing, you expect something bolder, stranger, more visually inventive, more emotionally committed. Instead, the animation often looks like polished video-game cutscenes at a moment when other animated features are pushing the medium into genuinely exciting territory. We’re living in a post-Spider-Verse world. Studio Ghibli still exists. This doesn’t come close to that level of craft or ambition. Cinesite’s own production material emphasizes the film’s CG animation pipeline, which may help explain the slick-but-generic visual texture.
Which makes the whole thing even more baffling. Why adapt Animal Farm now, when the story’s warning about authoritarianism and manipulated populism feels so immediate, only to sand it down with fart jokes and broad, weightless gags? Why take a story this potent and make it feel this small?
This is a head-scratcher. And while it may be brand new, it already feels like the kind of project that should be quickly forgotten and moved past.
