Animal Farm: has Andy Serkis made a pig’s ear of Orwell?

‘Enough of Orwell’s raw material remains for Animal Farm to be recognisable’

(Image credit: Aniventure)

It’s been 15 long years in the making but the reaction to the newly released trailer for Andy Serkis’ adaptation of “Animal Farm” suggests that time may not have been well spent. The actor and filmmaker’s animated version of George Orwell’s classic dystopian tale swaps the critique of totalitarian Soviet Russia for a takedown of 21st-century capitalism – with twerking pigs and fart jokes.

“My copy of ‘All Art is Propaganda’ burst into flames,” one Orwell fan posted on Reddit. This “Animal Farm” is a “movie about communism working, and being ruined by capitalism”, complained another on X.

‘Baffling’ and flatulent

“Oof magoof”, this trailer “feels so, very badly tone deaf”, said Nerdist. It “looks like it’s trying” to turn Orwell’s dark political allegory into something akin to 2006 critter caper “Over the Hedge”. In fairness, “with Serkis directing and Nicholas Stoller writing the screenplay, it’s entirely possible” that the full movie “will reflect the tone of the novella” – but, if so, why is the trailer “so goddamn goofy”?

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“The decision to inject lowbrow humour into such weighty source material is baffling,” said World of Reel. This “Animal Farm” is all celebrity voices, mile-a-minute CGI energy and family-friendly jokes. But I suppose flatulence is “one way to sell Orwell to a seven-year-old”.

The film has a “starry” cast, including Seth Rogen, Steve Buscemi, Kathleen Turner and Woody Harrelson, said Variety’s Peter Debruge, who saw a screening of the film at Annecy International Animation Film Festival. But “the message feels muddled” by “all the pratfalls” and the “noxious ‘Old MacDonald’ rap”.

Just “enough of Orwell’s raw material remains for ‘Animal Farm’ to be recognisable” but it’s “too disorderly to substitute for the book” – especially with the invention of new characters like the “ghastly capitalist” Freida Pilkington (Glenn Close) who “drives a Tesla-style Cybertruck” and bribes Napoleon, the pig leader of the animals, with credit cards.

‘Emphatic message’

The “specific allusions to the Russian Revolution” may be gone but Serkis terrifyingly accelerates the “opportunism and populism of Napoleon”, said IGN’s Rafael Motamayor, who also saw the Annecy screening. The pig’s “desperation to belong among ruthless human billionaires and their cyberpunk-esque vehicles strikes close to home in 2025”. Serkis is a “very competent director with a strong eye” and he’s captured “nuanced performances” from the animated characters.

Stoller’s screenplay is “funny and frighteningly perceptive”, said Pete Hammond on Deadline. It’s “wildly entertaining” and – “uncannily”, given the years it’s taken to get to the screen – may prove to “be a little too close for comfort to America’s drift toward authoritarianism” under the second Trump administration.

It’s not as if this is the first time filmmakers have played fast and loose with “Animal Farm”, said Debruge in Variety. In 1954, another animated adaptation was secretly co-funded by the CIA as part of its Cold War efforts to counter communism, “making alterations and trims” as it “saw fit”.

While it may never “satisfy diehard Orwell purists”, said Ben Daly on Screen Daily, this film “still takes a political stance and delivers an emphatic message” about “equality and the power of the collective – albeit one which permits us a little more hope” than Orwell’s novella.

Helen Brown joined The Week as staff sub-editor in 2024. She edits and fact-checks articles, and also writes the odd one or two. She has a particular interest in health and sport, and has written a book on parenting. She read Classics and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford, where she wrote for the student paper, Cherwell, and then studied magazine journalism as a postgrad at City University, London. After working as a local newspaper reporter and a sports researcher for the BBC, she cut her sub-editing teeth at Radio Times, before becoming chief sub-editor at Cosmopolitan and then the health-and-fitness magazine Zest. She also wrote for The Guardian, The Independent and the Daily Mail.