That’s one small setback for the legendary George Orwell. One giant leap for actor/director Andy Serkis’ baffling use of free will. A passion project more than 15 years in the making, Serkis’ animated new film take on Orwell’s revolutionary “Animal Farm” is just now hitting theaters in the U.S. — but it might as well have been made on the Moon. 

This bizarre miscalculation isn’t a cynical IP cash-in, but it is something stranger and ultimately more dispiriting from “The Lord of the Rings” icon. A deeply felt interpretation of a historic fictional work, Serkis’ “Animal Farm” seems to have lost its way somewhere between reverence and reinvention over the past decade. It’s not the byproduct of a director who misunderstands Orwell’s anti-fascist fable, so much as the result of an ambitious filmmaker letting this text’s power warp in his hands.

For a pioneering English thespian, whose career has been largely defined by a character consumed with obsession, this particular project carries an unintended symbolism. Whatever Serkis intended to do as a storyteller here, the movie he directed plays more like a misguided concept kept in a death-grip well after its execution had spiraled out of control. Even considered generously, watching Serkis’ “Animal Farm” feels like brain surgery — possibly performed by a sheep in the basement of an abandoned AMC. 

When a naïve piglet named Lucky (Gaten Matarazzo) rises to farmhouse leadership alongside the cunning boar Napoleon (Seth Rogen), the revolution sparked by their human farmer’s bankruptcy in the film‘s first act takes a turn for the fascist worse. Lucky is forced to watch as the utopia he was promised crumbles under the weight of corruption. That collapse is spurred not just by Napoleon, but also outside pressure from the human-run Pilkington Corporation, intent on reclaiming the freedom that these precious cartoon animals just seized. 

It’s a disorienting, intermittently grotesque experience that crescendos into a finale that swaps Orwellian dread for a Marvel-ish spectacle (no doubt a side effect of past partnerships between Disney and Serkis’ Imaginarium Studios). The structural problems reveal themselves early, as the revolution that defined Orwell’s novella is dispatched by minute 6. By minute 46, the animals are no longer equal, and that leaves nearly half the film left to fill with new material. This includes an extended corporate war arc, and metaphor for dopamine consumption, that bloats the length while draining allegorical clarity. 

The issue isn’t the narrative expansion itself, but what the changes reveal about the team behind them. The script, credited to screenwriter Nicholas Stoller (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall”), fundamentally confuses what “Animal Farm” was designed by Orwell to do as a work of literary journalism.

In his 1946 essay “Why I Write,” Orwell explained that his storytelling was never meant to drift into abstraction or polite ambiguity, but to instead confront oppression with intent. He noted then, “The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.” That guiding principle, along with Orwell’s stated desire to “make political writing into an art” in the same piece, underscores how deliberate and pointed the author felt “Animal Farm” was meant to be. 

But in an essay sent to critics, director Serkis describes his version as having “no ideology,” instead promoting a parable with mass appeal that he said was meant to apply in any context. It’s a well-intentioned idea in terms of universality, but also the film’s fatal flaw. Orwell’s work doesn’t endure because it is ideologically blank. It endures because it is both undeniably compelling and unafraid to be precise. More fundamentally, as a matter of genre, the “fable” is not something that can mean anything to anyone — but rather, a story that communicates so clearly it is understood everywhere. 

Sanding that motivation down into a more kid-friendly and open-ended spectacle, this adaptation doesn’t broaden Orwell’s message so much as empty it. That mistranslation is most visible in its tonal incoherence. The introduction of new younger characters, presumably designed to help guide children through Stoller’s already simplified narrative, signals a desire for intergenerational accessibility. But Serkis’ sweetly queasy film can’t reconcile with the brutality of Orwell’s original writing. A gag that reframes a slaughterhouse as a “laughter house” turns one of the book’s most chilling ideas into cute wordplay, and undercuts the stakes before they are driven.

The humor only grows more erratic and unpleasant from there. Fart jokes, an “Old McDonald” rap, and dialogue like “glue de gras” (used to describe the fate of Buster, a hard-working horse voiced by Woody Harrelson) collide with scenes of exploitation and authoritarian control. The story is only “updated” for 2026 in the sense that every totalitarian pig in this thing wears a Silicon Valley-type hoodie. And watching Minion-esque farm animals ride around on hoverboards and play beer pong creates the uncanny sensation of watching something that feels like A.I. slop, even as its authors proclaim years of human effort.

At times, the tonal clash introduced by those pops of ultra-modernity borders on absurdism. But a sharper satirical movie never breaks through, and in the end, “Animal Farm” feels caught between impulses. It’s unsure whether it wants to provoke, entertain, or simply get away with existing — and its star-studded voice cast spoils in a similar way. A lineup that includes Glenn Close, Kieran Culkin, Laverne Cox, Kathleen Turner, Jim Parsons, and more should be an asset. But instead, for “Animal Farm,” they blur into a sort of bleating celebrity noise. 

Close is saddled with an overextended subplot as the film’s main human antagonist, who adds semi-stylish layers without much meaning. And meanwhile, Rogen’s Napoleon gestures toward contemporary political caricature, without ever fully calling out Trump. The result leaves nearly every performer fumbling for traction in Serkis and Stoller’s muddy-yet-gutless cinematic sty. That sense of aimless moral drift seems to have inspired many of their most baffling choices.

The climactic credits sequence for “Animal Farm,” layering painterly images of pigs reenacting real human conflicts (from the French Revolution to World War I) pushes the overextended allegory to a feverish level of insulting confusion. The dagger comes to an insufferable point in a final post-credits gag that directs viewers to a pay-it-forward initiative via a literal QR code. Released regionally by Angel Studios, widely known for conservative and Christian content, the movie’s last moment is framed as partisan generosity. But after the catastrophe that precedes it, the moment feels like passing around a collection plate at a funeral. 

For better or worse, that disconnect between intention and outcome is what makes the odor of this “Animal Farm” linger. Serkis clearly reveres Orwell. His accompanying essay to critics, dense with biographical detail and (possibly misapplied) ideological framing, suggests an admiring artist who understands the challenge he attempted. And yet, Serkis’ “Animal Farm” itself reflects a shameful reluctance to commit to the courageousness that defined Orwell’s life.  

At a moment when media literacy feels increasingly fragile worldwide, that hesitation from someone as beloved as Serkis matters. “Animal Farm” wasn’t written to invite interpretation. It was penned to expose the mechanics of corruption at a point in time when Orwell believed the issue of fascism was of the utmost urgency. To flatten that into a more palatable, PG-friendly vision risks destabilizing the text itself and opening Orwell up to potentially deliberate misreadings that feel less like individual interpretations and more like cultural erosion.

There’s too much effort, too much time, and too much sincerity apparent behind this film to dismiss it outright. That’s what makes it frustrating, and maybe even tragic. A version of “Animal Farm” that tried and failed to say something specific might have been worth engaging. But a version that insists on saying nothing, particularly through such a politically-loaded distributor, is far harder to defend.

Early in the movie, the animals debate what to do with the farmer’s abandoned house. “May it sit empty,” Snowball suggests, “as a symbol of what we must not become.” Serkis would have done well to consider that advice. Some works don’t need to be reimagined to remain relevant, and their singularity should be reason enough alone for the people most inspired by them to leave them untouched. And yet, this new “Animal Farm” doesn’t just reopen the door to Orwell’s genius. It yanks at it, kicks at it, and leaves Serkis, Stoller, and their cast hanging from its hinges.

Grade: D+

Distributed by Angel Studios, “Animal Farm” will be in U.S. theaters on Friday, May 1.

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