Why
I Saw This Movie
I was assigned to teach the book Animal Farm to an advanced English
class, and after finishing the book we watched and discussed the movie
together.
Positives
* The puppetry is impressive, and Jim
Henson’s studio clearly did a good job on this.
* Although made after Jim Henson’s death,
the production contains elements of Jim Henson’s type of dark humor and
grotesque caricatures
* The cast is impressive: Patrick Stewart,
Kelsey Grammar, and Pete Postlehwaite
* Some great character acting by the human
actors in this movie
* The film adds in some characterization to
the human characters that was absent from Orwell’s original book
Negatives
* George Orwell’s original book wasn’t
exactly subtle to begin with, and it needed no extra emphasis to make its point—this
movie, however, was made by people who were worried you weren’t going to
understand that the pigs were bad unless everything was constantly
over-emphasized.
* As impressive as the puppetry is, the
technology just wasn’t quite up to telling the story the filmmakers wanted to
tell
* Some of the added characterization to the
human characters comes at the expense of the animal characters, most of whom
are much less developed in this film than they were in the book.
* Related to the above point—some of the
added scenes with the human characters went absolutely nowhere, and added
nothing to the story at all: the scene with Farmer Jones sleeping with Farmer
Pilkington’s wife, for instance.
* They changed Orwell’s original
pessimistic ending to an optimistic happy ending
The
Review
Although
it has most of the same plot points from Orwell’s novel, this fails completely
as an adaptation. The important scenes
are rushed through, and the ending is criminally changed.
However,
the dark humor of the tale is reminiscent of some of the darker toned fairy
tales that Jim Henson experimented with in shows like The Jim Henson Hour (W).
The great character acting and great expressive facial expressions by
the human actors also makes the movie feel like a Jim Henson Hour episode.
Other
Things I Would Talk About if I Wasn’t Limiting Myself to 100 Words
* My love for the original book, and my
history with the original book
* My experience teaching this book
* Reflections on my experience teaching
this book, and thoughts on whether or not the themes of the book should be
taught, or if the students should just be assigned to read the book and be left
to draw their own conclusions
Rating :
2 out of 10 stars, judging this movie as an
adaptation of Orwell’s book—if this movie existed in a universe where Orwell’s
book never existed, it might earn 5 out of 10 stars for a dark Jim Henson-esque
fairy tale.
Links
* For more thoughts on Orwell, see this post here. Also see my
reviews of Burmese Days, George Orwell Essays, Homage to Catalonia, and Keep the Aspidistra Flying.
Link of the Day
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