Animal Farm review – Andy Serkis’ Orwell adaptation slaughters the classic farmyard satire with sugar

The passionate allegory on Stalinism is outrageously reduced to happy-ending panto in this defanged animation featuring the voices of Seth Rogen, Laverne Cox and Glenn Close George Orwell’s Animal Farm is not a sacred text. There’s no rule that says it can’t be changed in adaptation, especially if, say, you wanted to add some historical perspective from the world that came to exist after the book was published in 1945. But this unforgivably sugary animation from screenwriter Nicholas Stoller ...

By Peter Bradshaw