Hmm, I really don’t know about this one: an animated adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm as a sort of Ice Age-ish comedy adventure? One commenter on YouTube says, “This movie is 100% gonna end with a random dance party scene with the pigs and humans dancing to something like Uptown Funk” and another suggests that “this is like a bad Family Guy joke from 2007 escaped into the real world”.From a review in IGN:Gone are the specific allusions to the Russian Revolution and the stinging critique of Stalinism laced into Orwell’s “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” allegory. Instead, Serkis paints the terrifying rise of porcine dictator Napoleon (Seth Rogen, playing brilliantly to and against type) in a broader brush for a modern era of big business run amok. In toning down the more graphic elements of its descent into totalitarianism and simplifying the depths of its commentary, the director and performance-capture pioneer trades a dystopian tone for something a little more uplifting. It’s a fun movie with some creative visual choices and a great cast, but it’s also hard not to feel like it lost some teeth on its journey from the page to the screen.This Variety review isn’t much more encouraging:Serkis’ 21st-century update dilutes Orwell’s political allegory in favor of what passes for something more “audience friendly”: His approach adopts the celebrity voices, cutesy character designs and antic, mile-a-minute energy of big-studio American toons. The result isn’t nearly as polished as Illumination or DreamWorks movies, but “good enough for government work,” as the saying goes. Tags: Animal Farm · books · George Orwell · movies · trailers · video 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →