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Animal Farm

Animal Farm

List Price: $14.98
Your Price: $13.48
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: worst book ever
Review: This was the worst book I ever read. I can't even believe I finished the whole thing. Who would write a book about animals that talk and take over a stupid farm. Another part of it that I hate is how each animal takes the role of a real person like Joseph Stalin.
Our English teacher made us read this book and we had to memorize who each character symbolized in real life. That made it even worse. The book drags on for so long too. He could get everything he wanted to say in like two or three chapters instead of dragging it on and on.
The other part that I hated was how it was written. They wrote it like they were talking to a five year old. It had to be one of the easiest books to read ever.
So in conclusion this book is the worst book I ever read. One because who would write about animals who symbolize real people and take over a farm. Then the books also drags on for so long you could get everything said in like two or three chapters and the book was made for a five year old to read it.


Rating: 4 stars
Summary: To keep.
Review: Ustinov's speech I had to listen at least ten times. Worth buying just for the old major's speech. I have one comment on the changes from the original book. This is not exactly "Animal Farm" Orwell wrote. But the changes are not necessearily bad. The demise of old USSR and the new owners of the farm (new face of western capitalism)fit really well with the historical sequal. I loved the fake smiles of the new family (neo-capitalism), coming to the farm with their American car.

Let's see when the animals will not be able bear the stink of the new "perfect masters"!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: It made me sleepy.
Review: I gave this movie 2 stars, because it is clear that a lot of attention and concern was put in the creation of the talking-animal effects. Unfortunately, one cannot say the same for the script. Orwell's "Animal Farm" was a thinly disguised allegory for the failure of the Russian Revolution. By 1999 the USSR was a thing of the past, so the scriptwriters must have felt they had to rework the story for modern times. Perhaps they assumed that their audience had never reads the book, menaing they could change it any way they wanted without opposition. The result was a badly thought out polemic that makes no sense, literally or allegorically.

For example, the characters of Moses the Raven (who symbolized religion) and Clover the mare (the refusniks) were written out. As a result the remaining animals seem to be little more than a faceless mob, differentiated by their species but remaining the same ideologically. When the mob starts to object to the pigs' rulership, they are pacified with television. Now, forgiving the supreme arrogance of a made-for-TV movie portraying TV as a pacifying force (I am sure the animals were not watching TNT, the producers of this film), this pivotal plot point makes no sense. Taken literally, how do you explain animals being interested in visual fare made by, for and about humans? Taken allegorically, the TV broadcasts were an outside force beyond the pigs' control, filling the viewers' heads with visions of unpartiotic decadence. Would-be dictators who permitted such things would have to be very foolish indeed.

Finally there is the ending, where well-intended humans take over the failing farm and become the benevolent guardians of the animals, with the animals' support. If this was an attempt to paste a happy ending over Orwell's cynical but powerful conclusion, it failed. If taken literally it suggets that the animals' sacrifices and efforts were for nothing, making the movie irrelavent. If it was meant to be taken allegorically, the message is that people should not even try to better their society, they should just submit themselves to benevolent masters an avoid this fuss of self determination (any nominations who said masters should be?).

Failed allegory, cheesy animal flick or greedy attempt to cash in on the success of "Babe," the movie version of "Animal Farm" fails on every level.


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