How could anyone possibly distill a film where Seth Rogen—voicing a pig based on Joseph Stalin—says “This is the sound of freedom,” before unleashing a cheek-rattling fart, into a single representative sequence? Well, leave it to Serkis and his team to rise to the challenge, and rise to it early. The freeze-frame-filled credits scene, stopping to introduce characters both literarily famous (Laverne Cox as Snowball, Woody Harrelson as Boxer!) and cinematically new (Gaten Matarazzo as Lucky, a cloyingly cute audience surrogate piglet), takes place as the animals overthrow the humans who’ve come to control their farm. This includes both Mr. Jones, the drunken and incomprehensible farmer, and the banker (Steve Buscemi) and his HAZMAT-suited lackeys who’ve come to seize the property. The fight is simplistic and forgettable. The music playing in the background is not.
While there are plenty of terrible musical montages in Animal Farm—including one where pigs go on a shopping spree in a mall, and one where a fuckboy pig in a hoodie plays on an iPad and drinks out of a Solo cup while “Get Ready For This” plays—nothing can compare to “Break Down The Barn” by Pigeon John. Oh yes, it’s not just a rap, but an original rap. Hopefully Pigeon John, a real rapper who’s shown up in a handful of John Singleton movies, can retire on the payday he earned for rapping lines like “There ain’t no holding us back / If you stand on two legs, then you’re getting attacked.”
The verses contain lyrics ranging from meaningless and imagery-focused (“It’s going down like a lumberjack / Take a look around, no needle in this haystack”) to literal (“All the money that you made, locking us in a cage / You better run or you’re getting the ax”). But little will prepare a viewer for the chorus, during which Pigeon John, swallowing every ounce of remaining pride, soundtracks this once-potent allegory against Soviet folly to an “Old MacDonald” chant of “E-I, E-I, E-I, let’s go!”
Sent reeling from the dark energy of this line, viewers will be in a stupor while Pigeon John, presumably looking at his banking app to make sure the wire transfer has gone through, repeats “Old MacDonald had a farm / had a farm, had-had a farm.” This is a poignant reminder of what humans have lost as the animals drive off the repo men and assume control of Animal Farm. “Brick by brick we break down the barn,” the song concludes, despite the titular animals (quite famously) proceeding to run the farm themselves rather than dismantle it.
This final observation falls in line with many that will be made about this version of Animal Farm, all orbiting the question of whether anyone involved has actually ever heard of Animal Farm before. The brainless slapstick, muddled message, and grating additions (Lucky the piglet has a crush on a lady piglet; the big bad drives a Cybertruck) add up to a confounding film that looks and sounds every bit like it was cobbled together, broken down, and reassembled over a full decade of second-guessing. But nothing—not the jokes about pigs getting facelifts, not Serkis’ rooster rolling out countless “cock-a-doodle-do my eyes deceive me” lines—compares to that exquisitely cringe-inducing opening rap.
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