Animal Farm

Release Date: 1999

Starring the voices of: Kelsey Grammar, Ian Holm, Julia Louise-Dreyfus, Julia Ormond, Pete Postelwaite, Paul Scofield, Patrick Stewart and Peter Ustinov

I have not read the original book by George Orwell, but I have it on good authority from one who has that this film does a decent job of following the book, even down to some of the dialogue. Everybody grew up on a talking animal film of one kind or another, but not exactly like this.

Our story begins with the lousy farmer Jones abusing his animals in his drunken carelessness, and the nicest of the talking animals, Jessie (Julia Ormond), takes it upon herself to tell the man’s animals that there’s going to be a big pow-wow in the barn that they should attend. The meet is headed by the pigs, and the head of them all is Old Major (voiced by the great Peter Ustinov Herod the Great for those of you losers who ain’t seen the Jesus of Nazareth TV movie epic!)

The old ham tells the animals what a load of losers human beings are, and why the animal kingdom must revolt and lead free lives. To achieve this, he creates the fundaments of “animalism”, which are that animals must never come to look like man, act like man, or in any way do anything that man would do. Unfortunately he comes up with the idea to make a “national” song of sorts as well, and since singing from animals sounds like screaming to human ears it wakes up the farmer who goes out to find out what the noise is all about, and he accidentally shoots Old Major dead.

The old pig is martyred, and the other animals, especially two pigs named Snowball (Kelsey Grammar), and Napoleon (Patrick Stewart)take charge in his absence. The only difference is that while Snowball is industrious, wants to learn new things and build a better life for the animals from Old Major’s ideals, Napoleon is greedy and purposefully distorts the memory and teachings of the pig elder in order to gain power.

The animals all follow Napoleon’s lines and step in order with the “New” commandments that he builds on Old Major’s ideals, slowly turning the farm into something darkly akin to Hitler’s Germany. Only some of the animals see through Napoleon’s madness at first, though it makes itself obvious to the dog Jessie first of all. The farm she loved is dying at his hands, and she knows if something is not done that they will lose their farm forever…

Animal Farm is a strangely dark movie for its genre, but then again this was not meant to be Disney Animals on Ice. This story had things to say, and the best analogy the author desired to use was in the animal/human scenario. The story resounds with me as a political junkie, because not only are the pig’s tactics like that of old day Germany, but frighteningly similar to what goes on in modern American politics through politicians with evil intent. That’s one thing I appreciate about the frankness of the message in that regard: that it is just plainly evil; that there are those who seek power to hurt others for their own benefit. It’s scary, but in the simple way it works it serves as a chilling reminder of just a small part of what we fight against in our lives, which is oppression through politics. I wasn’t entirely certain I agreed with their depiction of the human capitalist, but there are good and bad capitalists as there are good and bad politicians of course, so on that level I can agree with it.

This movie is touching, and deeply saddening which is why parents have to be cautious with the audience that they allow to view this film. Little kids will doubtless be spooked, unless all innocence is lost from our culture. This is a heavy, heavy movie, flat and simple, no matter what age you are. The special effects provided by the Henson boys are top notch robotic work, and even the small number of CGI critters are pretty good for a direct-to-video/TV film.

The slew of great voice actors from all over the spectrum is what made the characters so enjoyable. Patrick Stewart does himself a good villain in Napoleon (one of the most obvious villain names in history, but oh well, it works). All of the emotion comes through in Jessie, who is a purely good serious character who you really feel regret for. This entire production was well done, and in my opinion a much better example of Hallmark’s family entertainment than say Merlin starring Sam Neil. This movie has a little language and a cut-around human sexual affair, but it is a good solid family film if you want something of a little more meat (no offense meant) in your watching.

Acting: There were few roles that did not seem to be just perfectly cast for the respective characters, save some of the insignificant minor roles.

Special effects: 1/2 For a Made for TV film, this was well done, and sometimes it took a second look to realize that you were looking at a Muppet and not a real animal.

Language: (at most) Mostly light cursing.

Sexual content: A suggested bed scene between cheating spouses, a line from an animal talking about the virtue of not having sex because humans do it.

Heart enlightenment factor:

1/2 to It’s hard to feel one thing while watching this, because sometimes you feel incredibly depressed while other times, especially at the humble end, you tend to want to feel great happiness and relief. That does not change the fact that for the vast whole this is a dark, dreary movie, that only gets worse and worse and worse. But it is a darn good story, so overall…

Soundtrack: This film had an impressive, memorable score for a TV feature. The main theme is haunting and perfectly accents the drama of the tale.