PROCESSED HAM

In the multiplexes this weekend:

Animal Farm--Seen in a political and historical vacuum, this new movie is a strange but enjoyable enough animated feature for kids. But it's nearly impossible for many of us to see it in a vacuum.

The film is an adaptation of George Orwell's 1945 allegorical fable set on a farm in which the animals have run off the oppressive humans and set up a new society based on such rules as "ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL." What follows, of course, is the slide into selfishness, corruption and classism that seems to inevitably follow even the most high-minded of revolutions.

It's one of the great works of 20th-Century fiction, and the love that Andy Serkis, director of this new version, has for his source material feels unmistakable. But there's no way around it; Serkis and screenwriter Nicholas Stoller have turned Orwell's hard, unsentimental vision into just another kiddie flick. They've given it a star-studded cast with the likes of Kieran Culkin, Steve Buscemi, Glenn Close, Laverne Cox, Kathleen Turner, Jim Parsons and Woody Harrelson as the saintly horse Boxer.

They've added a character, a young pig named Lucky (voiced by Gaten Matarazzo of Stranger Things) to serve as the movie's conscience. They've filled the story with contemporary elements like cell phones and drones, and added a long action finale in which Lucky and the kingpin pig Napoleon (Seth Rogen; excellent) face off for the soul of Animal Farm.

Giving happy endings—well, not happy, but less dispiriting—to Orwell adaptations is nothing new. The 1956 version of 1984 offered an alternative ending used in some markets, in which Winston and Julia are shot down protesting Big Brother instead of surrendering to their brainwashing. A harsh but visually beautiful 1954 British animated version of Animal Farm (partly financed by the CIA!) ended with a second revolution by the animals, this time to overthrow the pigs.

So it's almost easier to excuse Serkis for offering a less gloomy and cynical Animal Farm, and certainly for adding flatulence jokes and other lowbrow gags, than for flexing Orwell's masterpiece to the standard template of the commercial animated feature. You can look from this Animal Farm to such rural tales as Barnyard and Ferdinand and Rock-a-Doodle and back again, and already it's impossible to say which is which.