Review of "Animal Farm" by Angel Studios

I have seen quite a number of productions by Angel Studios.  And I know the book "Animal Farm."  In fact, I have seen multiple movie or video adaptations of "Animal Farm."  So I was a bit surprised to see that Angel Studios would be doing a version of "Animal Farm." The productions by Angel Studios have happy endings.  "Animal Farm" does not have a happy ending.  George Orwell wasn't very big on happy endings.

But then the movie started, and I thought that this must be some different story, since the first animal we are introduced to is Lucky the pig.  I don't remember the part that Lucky the pig plays in George Orwell's "Animal Farm."  Oh, but wait.  Then we are introduced to Boxer, and Napoleon, and Snowball, and Farmer Jones, so maybe we *are* in Orwell's "Animal Farm."  Except that we also have some giant mega corporation buying a farm, and a drone, called Moses, which don't appear in "Animal Farm."

So it's confusing.

The story development of Orwell's "Animal Farm" proceeds pretty quickly, with Snowball being exiled, and Napoleon starting to take over.  (However, the allusions to the Russian revolution are a bit rushed, and therefore lost.)  Angel Studios is very heavily Christian oriented, so it isn't terribly surprising that the story relies less on political machination, and much more on temptation.

The plot of the original "Animal Farm" gets severely messed with, but the theme of new revolutionaries re-implementing the old dictatorship proceeds pretty much as it always did.  Electricity is good, then bad, then good ... and then maybe bad?  Then we get the ending of the "Animal Farm" book, but this movie doesn't finish.

Then we kind of go all "Animal *House*" for a while, and then we finally have a ... well a kind of an indeterminate ending, but I suppose that it could be *seen* as a happy ending.  At least there are a lot of warm and fuzzy sounding platitudes before we all sit and look at the stars, and consider that all the animals who went to the slaughterhouse could be coming back as stars.  Maybe.  Maybe you only come back as a star if you went to the glue factory instead of the laughterhouse.

The moral of the story is that farm markets are good, and wearing hazmat suits is evil.  (The reason why is too complicated for your little piggy brain.)

Or maybe that you can never go wrong as long as you remember that Snowb... Napo... Luck... Boxer is always right.  Except when he's wrong.

Or maybe that someone pretending to be your Dad is always evil.  But people who claim bast friend status are good.

Or maybe that astrology is based on your dead friends coming back as stars.

(Possibly Angel Studios should stick to making feel good films for adults, and avoid simplifying literature for kids.)