ANIMAL FARM (2026)

This is a well-made adaptation of a genuinely great book, and it earns its three stars. The animators keep Orwell's central bite intact: Napoleon and his fellow pigs hijack a just revolution and become exactly the tyrants they overthrew. That's a lesson worth every family learning, and the film delivers it with wit rather than a heavy hand.

Where it complicates things is in what it adds. A new corporate villain turns half the film into a critique of modern monopolies and consumer culture — a Romantic, socialist flourish that Orwell himself, a critic of propaganda from any direction, might have raised an eyebrow at. A post-credits note leaning on "oppressor" and "oppressed" language adds a modern political flavor some families will want to discuss rather than absorb uncritically.

None of this is explicit or crude — just some scary flood peril, a menacing dog scene, and a running gag about a pig passing gas. For older kids and up, this is a smart, funny, thought-provoking watch. Bring the conversation with you afterward.

When a drunken farmer and the bank manager foreclosing on his land try to load the farm's animals onto a train bound for the slaughterhouse, the animals revolt and take the farm for themselves. Under the wise pig Snowball's leadership, they write seven rules for a fairer life — "all animals are equal" chief among them — and turn the farm into the most successful one around.

But a rival pig named Napoleon has his own ideas about how things should be run, and a naive young piglet named Lucky is caught in the middle. Meanwhile, a shrewd rival farm owner is watching, with plans of her own.

Three stars means this is a genuinely good film, not just a faithful one. It keeps Orwell's depiction of Napoleon and his fellow pigs as Stalinist tyrants who work everyone else to the bone while keeping the benefits for themselves — the novel's central gut-punch survives intact. The added critique of a monopolistic modern conglomerate gives the story a contemporary hook, even if it pulls the film's politics in a direction Orwell's original didn't quite go.

The humor lands, including a running joke about a flatulent pig, and the action sequences — a flood, a helicopter, a pack of menacing dogs — bring real tension without tipping into anything worse than "scary." It's a smart, well-crafted piece of political animation that mostly earns the comparison to its source.

At its core, this film gets something right that matters: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Its strongest moments carry a genuinely moral worldview against communist tyranny, and a strong pro-capitalist thread runs alongside it — the animals thrive precisely when they work hard and trade honestly for profit.

But the filmmakers layer in something Orwell's novel didn't quite argue: a Romantic, socialist critique of modern consumer society, aimed at monopolies and big agribusiness-style conglomerates. And a note after the credits leans on "oppressor" and "oppressed" language that echoes today's ideological rhetoric more than Orwell's own convictions — a writer who spent his career warning against exactly this kind of propagandistic language, from any political direction. Families who know Orwell's actual politics — a critic of both communist and capitalist tyranny alike — will notice the film picks a side he never fully endorsed.

Still, the film's central warning is a true one, and Scripture agrees with it far more than any political ideology does: unchecked power, wherever it sits, tends toward oppression. "If you see in a province the oppression of the poor and the violation of justice and righteousness, do not be amazed at the matter" (Ecclesiastes 5:8). Every farm, every government, every human heart needs a check greater than itself.

Orwell's fable survives the trip to animation mostly intact, sharpened with a modern villain and a few gas jokes for good measure. It's smart, well made, and worth the conversation it invites — about power, propaganda, and who gets to call whom "oppressed." Our answer is the same one we opened with: worth the trip — ages 10 and up.