Most reviewers are treating Angel Studios’ animated Animal Farm like someone kicked their dog. The outrage is loud and, largely, unearned. This is a movie worth seeing.
The film updates George Orwell’s 1945 novella from a Soviet-era allegory to a contemporary one. The pigs still seize power. The revolution still devours itself. The slogan “all animals are equal” still becomes a punchline by the second act. What changes is the outside force doing the manipulating. Instead of human farmers negotiating with Napoleon behind closed doors, the film introduces Frieda Pilkington, a corporate executive in a power suit who swoops in with capital, smiles, and a plan to turn the animals’ handmade water mill into a profit-generating hydroelectric dam.
Some critics have called this anti-capitalist. Angel Studios says it’s anti-communist. Both readings miss the structure. The farm is communist from the start. The communists, convinced of their own righteousness, get played by an outside party with money and ambition. Pilkington doesn’t conquer the farm by force. She buys access to Napoleon, flatters his ego, and runs the animals into debt. The farm’s own ideology makes it vulnerable. That’s a sharper observation about how ideological capture works than most reviewers gave it credit for. It’s very poignant as a message and definitely rooted in current reality in our world for Soros-style manipulation of third world countries.
The villain herself is pure Cruella de Vil, down to the theatrical wardrobe. Glenn Close plays her with relish, and the film knows exactly what kind of movie it is when she’s on screen. Mr. Whymper, the go-between character from the original novella, gets reimagined here as a fidgety Jewish banker type, all nervousness and compound interest. When one sees how he is used as a vehicle to dupe the animals into debt and manipulate them with currency they don’t understand, it’s another poignant message.
The animation is clean and competent. Anyone who saw Angel’s David will recognize the house style. David was the stronger film, but this one holds up alongside it visually.
The voice work is solid across the board. The standout is the subtle romance subplot between two of the pigs once Lucky realizes Napoleon has been manipulating him. It shouldn’t work as wholesome moments showing forgivness and love in a movie with fart jokes, but it does. It’s definitely something outside the book but the tender moment with Lucky rubbing noses with the pig he truly loves is a cute one.
The core message of Orwell survives the translation. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The revolution becomes the tyranny. Truth gets rewritten until the rewriting is the only history anyone remembers. That’s all still here. What’s gone is the bleak ending. Orwell closes with the animals staring through a window, unable to tell the pigs from the men. Angel Studios closes with something more hopeful. It’s a deliberate choice, and it costs the film some of its bite.
This wants to be a kids’ movie and a warning about authoritarianism at the same time, and those two goals pull against each other. Fart jokes and the horror of Boxer being sold to the knacker don’t coexist well. The film navigates around the darkest corners of the book, and you feel the absence, which is what most critics are reacting to. A Soviet allegory in 1945 was for adults who had seen what happened when the pigs took over. A family-friendly animated feature in 2026 has different obligations, and the film chose its audience.
That’s a legitimate creative choice. It’s also the reason the movie lands at good rather than great. But those who are trying to attack Angel Studios over this are barking up the wrong tree.
The ideological criticism from mainstream reviewers amounts to: “This doesn’t say what we wanted it to say.” The actual criticism is gentler: the film tries to ride two horses, and the funniest and most pointed moments belong to the same movie that pulls its punches at the finish. Kids will enjoy it. Adults who know the book will recognize what got left on the floor.
7/10. Worth your time, and worth taking your kids to.