Animal Farm (1999) - 3 stars out of 10

Animal Farm (1999) - 3 stars out of 10

This film gets by because of George Orwell's incredible allegorical telling of the Russian Revolution and beyond through a group of animals that take over their farm.  Unfortunately, I don't think that Orwell ever intended for this to become a live-action motion picture.  Parts of the film work and parts of the film don't.
Things that work: All of the voice actors, computer animation of Jessie's mouth, the nationalistic anthems (with their symbolic Russian feel), Jim Henson's creatures.
Things that do not work: Pig puppets drinking whiskey, pig puppets wearing clothes, pig puppets conversing with humans, pig puppets symbolically representing Stalin, Lenin, Marx, and Trotsky.

Much of this movie just can't be taken seriously.  In a book or animated film, it is easy to place yourself into the "fantasy realm" and accept the events of the story.  This allows you to look beyond the farm animals and see the allegory.  But when converted to live-action, the ridiculousness of some of these scenes makes it difficult to see past the monocle-wearing puppets in order to absorb the entire point of the story.  Don't get me wrong - the Henson Creature Shop's wet-nosed porkers are incredibly realistic when they are pigs.  The problems occur when they start acting like humans since pigs generally don't act like humans.  It's a shame because so many big names signed up for this, including Pete Postlethwaite, Julia Ormond, Patrick Stewart, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Peter Ustinov, and Kelsey Grammer.  It was a nice attempt but even this all-star cast can't make a conceptual doomsday device work.  Live-action "Charlotte's Web" is one thing... live-action "Animal Farm" is another.