Animal Farm

With the exception of the ending, Britain's first feature-length animation sticks to the letter of George Orwell's 'memorable fable' on the hopes and failures of the Soviet revolution, using an avuncular narrator (Gordon Heath) and ceding all the (infrequent and largely inarticulate) character voices to Maurice Denham, rather than attempting to get under the skin of the piece. Consequently, Halas and Batchelor's film feels more like an illustrated audio book (or study aid) than a fully fledged movie: an intellectual experience, not an emotional one.