April 30, 2026

KYLE SMITH: Animal Farm Review: Mucking Up Orwell.

While the animals are initially excited to share the ownership and operation of the farm, dividing the bounty equally becomes a problem. Napoleon turns into a parody of Donald Trump who mocks and razzes his political rival, another pig named Snowball, who is voiced by Laverne Cox. Whatever wise good governance Snowball suggests—saving half the harvest for winter, installing a water mill to generate electricity—Napoleon (or, as he calls himself, “Na-po-po”) leads the crowd in mockery. “It just sounds pretty boring,” he says, and pushes a jeering mob of brainless sheep to repeat whatever he says. Before being forced into exile, a frustrated Snowball cries out, “You animals are all too stupid to understand.” Mr. Stoller and Mr. Serkis (the veteran actor who played Gollum in the “Lord of the Rings” movies, Caesar in the “Planet of the Apes” franchise and Alfred in “The Batman”) consider this remark a sharp rejoinder to populism. Do you feel duly reprimanded, fools?

Much of this roams pretty far from Orwell’s vision, but that’s not the reason the film fails. It fails because it’s obvious, witless and dull. The animation is charmless and bland. The altered storyline, which is told from the point of view of a new character, a porcine young Everyman named Lucky (Gaten Matarazzo), and narrated by Orwell’s stand-in for the suffering proletariat, the ever-toiling workhorse Boxer (Woody Harrelson), builds to a conspiracy between the increasingly dictatorial Napoleon and a clumsily reworked version of Orwell’s Mr. Pilkington, a tech mogul (Glenn Close) who has nefarious designs on Animal Farm. Her company is both a snazzy creator of cool products and a mega-retailer—a sort of Applezon. The animals, who become more and more like humans as the story goes on, get dazzled by and addicted to her wares. People say things like, “I like the optics.” A pig has a back tattoo reading “Go pig or go home.” The strenuous attempts at hipness here are as antithetical to Orwell as any other element.

USA Today adds: Andy Serkis explains why he changed Orwell’s iconic ‘Animal Farm’ ending for new movie.

Andy Serkis has been trying to animate George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” for 15 years. In 2026, he says, it “couldn’t, actually, be more relevant.”

Serkis and his producing partner, Jonathan Cavendish, started tinkering around with an adaptation after he filmed 2011’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” The rebellion in that movie reminded him of “Animal Farm,” which he read for the first time on the bus to school when he was 10 or 11. Fifty-some years later, it sticks with him. He wore a red hat to the premiere that read, “Make Animal Farm Fiction Again.”

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Serkis approached the adaptation by asking himself what Orwell would write about if he wrote “Animal Farm” today. He didn’t want it to be a story about Stalinist Russia. Instead, he gravitated toward themes of capitalism, wealth and overconsumption. The billionaire antagonist, Pilkington (Glenn Close), drives what closely resembles a Cybertruck.

This isn’t the first attempt at a mirror universe Animal Farm; Roger Waters did the same thing nearly 50 years ago on Pink Floyd’s Animals: “Whereas the novella focuses on Stalinism, the album is a critique of capitalism and differs again in that the sheep eventually rise up to overpower the dogs.”

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

REMEMBER, TRUMP IS A THREAT TO NORMALCY:

Posted at 4:58 pm by Glenn Reynolds

CONSERVING CONSERVATISM MOST CONSERVATIVELY:

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Maine Shows Antisemitism Is a Shortcut to Success in the Modern Democratic Party.

Governor Janet Mills on Thursday announced that she was dropping out of the Maine Senate race, with polls showing her way behind Graham Platner, who is now presumed to be the Democrat who will go up against Senator Susan Collins in one of the most hotly contested races of the year.

Platner was largely unknown at this point last year and yet managed to drive a sitting governor out of the primary before a single vote was cast. But he had one thing going for him, which is that he gained attention for his antisemitism. That is a ticket to success in the modern Democratic Party.

Al Sharpton smiles.

UPDATE: Question asked:

Flashback: Steve Hayward’s review of Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism, from the January 2008 edition of the Weekly Standard.

MORE:

Posted at 2:55 pm by Ed Driscoll

ALL OUTER PARTY MEMBERS FEAR DOUBLEPLUS UNGOOD CRIMETHINK:

Related:

Tweet continues, “We’ve not spoken since. I was a great guy and scholar until I expressed a political opinion that was ‘heretical.’ I then became a subhuman. This is coming from an individual who support the Party of Empathy.”

Regarding Mark Hemingway’s comment that “the contemporary left is constantly blindsided by their support for issues they’ve been told are popular only to wake up one day and find out they’re a huge liability,” we saw this recently play out when Bill Maher interviewed leftist actor/comedian David Cross, who was oblivious to what flyover country thinks about transing kids. As Maher told him, “Good luck with President Vance. Because, as I always say to my woke friends, we voted for the same person. You’re just why she lost and this is a case of that.”

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

“I’D RATHER HAVE A SISTER IN A WHOREHOUSE THAN A BROTHER IN THE FBI.” Wait, Did the FBI Secretly Dig Up Civil War Gold? New Documents Shed Light on What Really Happened. “The FBI has never wavered from its statement, made shortly after the dig was completed on March 14, 2018, that nothing was found on Dents Run. But this steadfastness hasn’t changed anyone’s mind in the community—and the Bureau’s behavior in the aftermath of the excavation has only surfaced more questions. The FBI hasn’t just denied excavating gold; the Bureau has denied doing things that neighbors plainly witnessed, including the overnight dig.”

Posted at 2:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

MORE IMPROPER PAYMENTS BAD NEWS: America’s biggest employer-based health insurance program is sending out beaucoup checks to dead people, for people who aren’t eligible for benefits and service reimbursements far in excess of what is allowed, according to a blistering report by the Government Accounting Office (GAO). Trumpers are trying to eliminate the causes, which were largely ignored during the Biden years. More here on The Washington Stand.

Posted at 1:48 pm by Mark Tapscott

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Quixote Studios Lays Off 70, Winds Down L.A. Locations Amid Production Slump.

Hudson Pacific Properties bought the company in 2022 for $360 million, but has since had to write down the entire value of its Quixote unit due to heavy operating losses.

“Obviously, clearly it was not the best deal we’ve ever done, but if you compare that to everything else we’ve done, then we’re doing okay,” said Victor Coleman, the chairman and CEO of Hudson Pacific, at an investor conference in March. “We think that we have multiple alternatives with that asset that we can make it zero or at least flat at the end of the year.”

Quixote is kind of a big deal in L.A., where film and TV production jobs are down something like 40% from post-COVID highs.

Previously: Hollywood Is Sick — but It’s L.A. That’s Dying.

Posted at 11:43 am by Stephen Green