Stoller also described the unique sense of humor in his script for Serkis' Animal Farm:

"It's a bit updated because, obviously, the book was written in the ‘40s, so if you were to update that exactly to what it was, it would feel a bit dated. So, I updated it a bit and made it more darkly comic than the book is. "

“We started to work on it and did a lot of experimenting, which led us to realize that animation was the right medium for this adaptation. That allowed us to keep the innocence of the storytelling that the original book had, while being able to say much more than live action would allow us to do. In live action, such a story would necessarily have been darker from the outset. Whereas with an animated movie, breaking those ties with reality and keeping Orwell’s book, which he described as a fairy tale, in that realm gave us much more freedom to still have emotional engagement with the characters, keep it innocent, and then progressively let the darker themes come in underneath that.”

[another] feature-length version of “Animal Farm” was a 1999 TV movie with animatronic animals from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop..

George Orwell had a unique talent for predicting the future in his books, notably 1984, but now seeing director Andy Serkis‘ new animated take on Orwell’s 1945 all-too-predictive allegory and satirical story, Animal Farm, he seems more like a Nostradamus than ever. With a screenplay, alternately funny and frighteningly perceptive by Nicholas Stoller, this gorgeously animated version is not outwardly trying to be political but nevertheless is uncannily meeting its time and proving to be a little too close for comfort to America’s drift toward authoritarianism...

Although this may not quite sound like safe fare for the kiddies, this is that rare animated feature that works on many levels and thus will find favor with the whole family for different reasons. Animation or not, it looks to me to be one of the most important films of the year. Heed what Orwell is talking about before it all comes tumbling down.

Animal Farm’s political ire is redirected in this lively CG-animated adaptation directed by Andy Serkis. Rather than Stalinism, Serkis takes aim at greed, rapacious consumerism and corporate corruption and malfeasance. There’s also a timely dig at populist political movements....

But while it may struggle to satisfy diehard Orwell purists, the film still takes a political stance and delivers an emphatic message celebrating equality and the power of the collective – albeit one which permits us a little more hope than was present in Orwell’s 1945 novella..

One of the main alterations to the original story is the addition of the central character of Lucky (Gaten Matarazzo), a bright young piglet who finds his allegiances torn between gentle, progressive liberal pig Snowball (Laverne Cox), who nurtured Lucky’s intellect and taught him to read, and the divisive rabble-rouser Napoleon...

The look of the picture is romantic and inviting. There’s a warm, honeyed glow to the light, a permanent pink-tinged magic hour that makes the farm look like a place where nothing bad could ever happen. And that’s perhaps the point – the story is viewed through the eyes of Lucky, a naïve but inherently decent idealist who wants to believe the best about his fellow beasts,..

Serkis’ version of Animal Farm is a coming-of-age picture that argues that our best hope for a better future rests with the younger generation.