Writers: Alan Janes and Martyn Burke
Cast: Pete Postlethwaite (Jones); the voices of Kelsey Grammer, Ian Holm, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Julia Ormond, Paul Scofield, Patrick Stewart, Sir Peter Ustinov.
The TNT Network's presentation of George Orwell's Animal Farm is something of a disappointment. Despite its general adherence to the original novel, brought to life with the wonderful creations of Jim Henson's Creature Shop, it is an uneven, slow-starting film that could lose people with short attention spans.
That would be a shame, because once you get past the additions the scriptwriters felt compelled to add, the story becomes as biting and compelling as Orwell meant it to be.
The plot of the movie is fairly simple. Mistreated and neglected by the drunken Farmer Jones, the animals of Manor Farm take comfort in the words of Old Major, the prize boar. Old Major tells them he has had a vision of a day when all animals are free and safe. When the aged pig is killed by Jones, the animals rebel under the direction of the other pigs -- Napoleon, Squealer and the idealist, Snowball. After repelling an invasion by the humans, they believe they have achieved their dream.
Soon, however, they find their ideals and dreams are being warped and thwarted as Napoleon, aided by the arch-propagandist Squealer, first drives Snowball away and then begins to impose a dictatorship. The pigs move into the house, a clear violation of the laws set down by Old Major and painted on the side of the barn by Snowball. They sleep in the beds and hoard most of the food for themselves. In time, they enter into a trade agreement with humans, working the other animals to produce goods they then sell to profit themselves. In the end, the pigs are overrun and the rest of the animals must flee to preserve their freedom.
Part of the problem, ironically, is that the film does follow the original story so closely. Animal Farm was written for a specific purpose: to warn the world of the tragic consequences of Stalinism. Without that historical reference, its tale of animals revolting against their human abusers only to fall victim to their own kind exists in a vacuum. True, it's basic truth remains. Revolutions become tyrannies when the people surrender all control of their lives to leaders because doing so seems easier. Most Americans, however, have only a peripheral knowledge of either revolution or tyranny. The lesson, then, is lost on them, and this movie becomes little more than another Disneyesque animal story.
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