This movie has been out for over a year now, and for the most part I have been very reluctant to review it, mainly because this is not exactly an easy movie to talk about in the best way. I had no real idea of what to say about it, or how I would really rate it. But thankfully with its sequel recently released, I think I have a more sincere way to discuss this movie when it comes to comparing it to the sequel. So here at last is my own review for the very controversial My Little Pony: Equestria Girls.
Plot: Set shortly after the events of season 3 of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, recently crowned Princess Twilight Sparkle and her friends come to the Crystal Empire for Twilight's first royal summit with the other princesses who rule Equestria. But later that night, her magical crown is stolen by a unicorn named Sunset Shimmer who takes the crown through a magical mirror. Twilight followers her through the mirror with her dragon assistant, Spike, and so travel to an alternate world where everyone from their world are teenage, high school humans, and Sunset Shimmer is the popular girl who rules the school is an iron fist. So it's up to Twilight as a human herself and Spike as a dog to find a way to get her crown back with the help of the human counterparts of her friends.
Now with this particular movie, I have to split my body paragraph into two paragraphs (yeah I know, big shocker), because before I can talk about the film itself, it's important to talk about its background. Now like I said, this is a very controversial film, especially on account of the fact that, generally speaking, this was a movie that few to NOBODY wanted. As I've briefly explained in my Top 15 Songs from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, what gave this show this surprisingly big fan base was how it turned out to be entertaining for both kids and adults of both genders. Yes, it is a kids show that is aimed for girls, but that only makes it more impressive that when the creators of the show, DHX studios, wanted to make something better for kids than what most kid TV shows have to offer nowadays, they ended up creating something more than being just for kids. Whether it's the story, the world, the songs, morals, music or all of the above, they made something that people of all ages and both genders can enjoy and love in roughly the same way that Disney or Miyazaki or Dreamworks animation or in some respects, the Marvel films can be for everyone. The reason I am explaining all of this is because even with all of that said, there have been times where Bronies have worried that the show would lose what makes it unique by having something too girly in a sense. Part of that is because it's still a kids show, but its also because its franchise is owned by Hasbro: a company that you could arguably say has a bit of a reputation for sometimes focusing too much on the quantity of merchandise sold, than the quality of the films/shows that are based on that merchandise...or even the quality of the merchandise itself for that matter. And the mere existence of this movie, with the setting as the characters appearing as teenage humans in high school, debatably caused the biggest scare that Hasbro was finally going to ruin the show for good. Actually, let me elaborate on that. The problem itself is more the high school setting than the characters appearing as humans. In fact, some Bronies where okay with this because of how it was made because we made a lot of stories and art about how the characters would look as humans. So it seemed like this was a good risk to take and expand the universe if you will of MLP. And in some respects, yes, that is very true. But where there is artistic differences between Hasbro and the Bronies is that when we made our stories and art of the ponies as human, we made them as adults. Young adults at the least. After all, the characters in the show are pretty much adults themselves. They usually live by themselves, some of them run their own businesses, and so on and so forth. So the idea of making them humans in our general opinion would be a bigger, better and more reasonable risk if they are adults and NOT by taking a rather cliched, one-noted and lazy direction as having them just be teenagers in high school. And I know what some of you are thinking: "It's a kids movie, you shouldn't expect it to be to your liking, its just for little girls to sell dolls." But there are a few problems to this so-called argument. 1) Just because it's intended for kids, doesn't mean people who like the show like me are not allowed to want it to be good, rather than just let it be something that talks down to children - especially when it's based on a show that is made by a studio who have proven many times to be better than that. 2) Even girls questioned this idea...or at least I've seen a video or two where a little girl questioned the move, and 3) Hasbro focusing on just girls gives them the same problem as DC Comics seeming to focus on just young men and Cartoon Network focusing on just little boys. That being, it's a demographic that they ALREADY HAVE! Thus, it would be smarter to focus on more than just one group, which kind of goes double if not triple for Hasbro since they know full well about the Brony community and thus that they have more people to please and make money off of besides just little girls and their parents at best.
Okay I'm done rambling about how controversial this movie was. So let's finally talk about the movie itself. How did this movie turn out despite its major controversy? Well for me personally, I think it's very entertaining...majorly flawed as I honestly expected it to be, but still very entertaining. I find myself enjoying this film for the most part whenever I watch it, because they surprisingly don't focus so much on the fact that the characters are in high school, but more on the characters and what they where experiencing, on top of little Easter eggs related to the show and the community that kids and Bronies could enjoy. Now did those things always work? Well...let's talk about the good stuff first. First off, they did a genuinely good job at giving us the human counterparts of the original characters - namely, Fluttershy, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Applejack and Rainbow Dash - in a way that keeps the personalities of the ponies from the show while also changing a couple of things about these new versions of the characters in a way that makes sense. We still have Fluttershy being shy along with having her passion for taking care of animals, we still have Rarity with her sense of fashion, we still have Applejack with her apples and Pinkie Pie...well... being Pinkie Pie. And we get brief moments with secondary characters like the Cutie Mark Crusaders, Big Macintosh, The Great and Powerful Trixie, just all of these examples with some of our most beloved characters in the show appearing as humans is just enjoyable. And while some characters had less screen time than others, it was great to see their human counterparts all the same. Also the animation in a sense is somewhat impressive. The show is made via Flash animation, and so I would agree with some Bronies such as AnY Pony that while it's not the most beautiful animation, this is still a well done feet considering that DHX studios had to basically start from scratch with creating new designs, movements, facial expressions, backgrounds and so on with this new setting of the characters appearing as humans instead of ponies. On top of that, while I can't vouch for how people feel about most human designs of these characters considering the controversy, there are some characters that most people can agree turned out very well as humans. Human Fluttershy especially in my opinion and in the opinion of a lot of Bronies, turned out to be just as adorable (as an animated character mind you) as the pony Fluttershy herself. And there are cases here and there where the music is very fun to listen to. The opening song, I think gives a great sense of excitement that sets most of the mood of the film in general. But that is nothing compared to the biggest song in the film; Equestria Girls (Cafeteria Song). Even people who made it no secret that they hate this film's guts admitted that the scene where this song played was easily the best part of the entire film. It's hard to explain why other than the fact that, on top of a couple of nods to the fans that were pretty awesome, the song itself just gives so much excitement and joy along with being extremely catchy that you can't help but have so much fun watching the scene again and again and again. Now with most of the good stuff talked about, what about the bad stuff? Because sadly, there's a lot of them. Let's start off with what is probably the film's biggest problems; the plot and the pacing. Now as I said, it's great that, for the most part, they focused more on the characters and on Twilight trying to get her crown back. But that sadly doesn't really save the film, because the plot is actually very flawed and poorly paced. While it's not as bad as something like the Transformers sequels, Equestria Girls is very littered with some major plot holes. Why didn't Twilight just take the crown since she knows where it is? Couldn't some of the stuff Sunset Shimmer did to sabotage Twilight's attempts to become Princess of the Fall Formal actually get her kicked out of the election? Why didn't Sunset Shimmer use Photoshop when she was trying to frame Twilight? How was Sunset Shimmer suppose to destroy the portal? All of these plot holes and more ended up hurting the movie really badly. And part of it is because the film was kind of rushed. Considering that they basically had 70 minutes to pick up where season 3 left off, start the plot, introduce this new world and versions of the same characters and then finish the rest of the plot, it's clear to see that some plot lines had to be either unfinished or just finished really quickly in order to tell the story in that short amount of time. Which is a real shame considering that some plot lines, like the human counterparts of Twilight's friends starting off hating each other, where actually pretty decent ideas for introducing this alternate world, but sadly where resolved way too quickly. Two other big problems where the two new characters, Flash Sentry and Sunset Shimmer. Flash Sentry is basically the popular boy in the school with his band and "cool" hair and guitar and so on, who Twilight develops a crush on. A lot of people hate him because he falls into the high school cliche of the main character having a crush on the popular person from the opposite sex. I personally don't mind too much about this since I kind of like the idea of Twilight (or anyone among the main characters) getting a love interest...except they do almost nothing with Flash Sentry. He barely says anything to Twilight, he doesn't really have any characteristics that makes him stand out, and so he came out as a pretty bland and uninteresting character. Sunset Shimmer, while not the worst villain in the franchise, was barely any better in comparison to Flash in this movie. The premise to her character is interesting with how she was a former student of Princess Celestia, but the execution of her character and her actions were badly done. She's basically another example of how the plot itself was very flawed and horribly paced in how she did have potential as a villain, but because of those problems I just mentioned, she ended up falling pretty flat. Finally, the music in general was not that good. Don't misunderstand me, I still stand by how I felt about the opening song and Equestria Girls (Cafeteria Song). But with the rest of the soundtrack...you can tell that the music composer for the show, Daniel Ingram, who has given a considerable amount of variety of music in the show, had a lot of trouble bringing his A game for the music to his film. With basically all of the music more or less needing to be pop songs, the majority of the music aside from the ones I talked about already came out pretty bland.
And that's my review for My Little Pony: Equestria Girls. This film has a lot of controversy as to whether or not it should have existed, but for what it was, I thought it was at least entertaining with what it did with its characters, some of its music, and its nice little easter eggs for the fans of the show. Was that enough to save the film? Well...no. As a film altogether, I have to admit that it is bad because of its numerous plot holes, mostly bland soundtrack and poorly developed new characters. But at the end of the day, this film gained some very mixed reception from its viewers. There are people who like it, some hate it, and some just think it's "meh". For me personally, I like it enough that I consider it a very guilty pleasure at the end of the day.
Now I know that this review is extremely long and kind of all over the place, and I apologize for that. But please try to understand that, similar to some of my reviews like Man of Steel and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 with the controversy with those movies, this was not a film that I could simply say if it's good or bad and why without going into major detail, especially since my blog is generally meant for everyone to view, which includes both people who do watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and people who don't. But don't worry, I assure you that the review to this films sequel will be LOADS smaller and more to the point than this was.
Rating: 50%
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