My Little Pony: The Movie (2017)

[StevePulaski]

My Little Pony: The Movie (2017)
Directed by: Jayson Thiessen

Rating: ★★½

I have no problem making time for a film like My Little Pony: The Movie - even if that time requires driving to a theater and purchasing a ticket. Not only do I love the theatrical moviegoing experience, but I recognize a film like My Little Pony isn't always going to get the honest critical evaluation it truly deserves. As much as it'll conjure up laughs, sneers, and eye-rolls, it at least deserves to be seen and taken into consideration, much like any movie. A lot of people spent a lot of time and money on it, and for that reason alone, it deserves a fair assessment.

As someone who is blissfully ignorant about the television program(s) as well as the several direct-to-video movies they've made on the famous Hasbro property, I could only outsource whatever background information I already know. One thing I've heard is that the My Little Pony franchise has garnered a lot of support from older, predominately male, fans, who have coined the portmanteau "brony" to affectionately bill their love. Another detail I've unearthed is that the enjoyment from this unlikely demographic comes because the show apparently takes topics like social anxiety, awkwardness, and alienation into account when illustrating storylines and effectively makes them sympathetic traits rather than justifications to ostracize one another. That's remarkably deep; far deeper than anything I was prepared to bring up in this review.

Maybe that's what My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, the Discovery Family television show on which this film is based, largely revolves around, but such traits are absent from this film. It skips the possibility of branching out to try and attract new fans and just assumes everyone in the audience is on-board with the pony/unicorn shenanigans as if they've been following the characters since the start of the program back in 2010. The film revolves round its main-pony Twilight Sparkle (voiced by Tara Strong), who leads a pack of her pony-friends - the colorful Rainbow Dash and the farm-pony Applejack (both voiced by Ashleigh Ball), the incessantly perky Pinkie Pie, the king Fluttershy (both voiced by Andrea Libman), the fashionista Rarity (Tabitha St. Germain), and their dragon sidekick Spike (Cathy Weseluck) - against Tempest Shadow (Emily Blunt), a unicorn with a broken horn.

Tempest is merely an associate villain, however, working alongside Storm King (Liev Schreiber), both intent on destroying their homeland of Equestria. After escaping their home in order to devise a plan, the ponies become stowaways on a pirate-ship as well as confidants of a trickster cat (Taye Diggs). Arguably the best side-character is Tempest's henchman Grubber (Michael Peña), a goofy hedgehog who has some of the funniest one-liners and whose very presence and facial expressions alone can carry the weight of a good belly-laugh.

The film's retrograde animation looks like a celebration of excess and color-vomit all spewed on-screen in true acid-trip fashion. It's a break from the CGI affairs that are so common-place today, but it's not too far from the LEGO movies in terms of its preoccupation with fast-paced action and visual explosions. Everywhere you look, primary colors invade the screen or pixie dust flies aimlessly through the verisimilitude, the animatiors silently pledging a commitment to transport us somewhere that doesn't look anything like where we're used to. It's not ugly, nor is it short on vibrant hues, but the excess of it all is what's liable to wear you down, and this is not a short movie that stops before that becomes an issue.

At 100 minutes long, My Little Pony: The Movie is a bit too exhaustive in hopes to keep this threadbare plot moving, and once again, anyone entering this blind will emerge with little insights on the ponies, much less of what's the best way to discern them from each other. Some can fly, others can't, some have horns denoting they're unicorns, and others don't; I think princesses are more sparkly than others, and I think the ones who can ooze or produce pixie dust are some kind of truly special being. At one point, the ponies also turn into sea-ponies with the ability to breathe and function underwater in a showcase of evolutionary progress neither Lamarck nor Darwin could've envisioned.

For its length and occasional ability to breed restlessness, the film is at least marginally entertaining, with some so-so music from the likes of Daniel Ingram, Zoe Saldana, and Sia. On a terribly irregular basis, American cinema gets a film that could serve as a nice, easy introduction to moviegoing for young children, and while My Little Pony: The Movie isn't Winnie the Pooh (2011), it's a breezy oddity with the rare capability to dazzle and captivate people of varying ages, perhaps for even some of the same reasons.

NOTE: Watch an edited simulcast of my radio-show "Sleepless with Steve" where my co-host and I review My Little Pony: The Movie:

Voiced by: Tara Strong, Ashleigh Ball, Andrea Libman, Emily Blunt, Tabitha St. Germain, Cathy Weseluck, Liev Schreiber, Michael Peña, and Kristin Chenoweth. Directed by: Jayson Thiessen.