The Mane Six Travel to the Big Screen in My Little Pony the Movie (Special Guest Jordan Wright of Crit Hit)

7 years ago, Hasbro relaunched the “My Little Pony” franchise with a redesign of their toyline to be carried by the launch of 2010’s “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic,” the subject of which “My Little Pony: The Movie (2017)” is the direct focus of.

 The show was shepherded by animation industry veteran Lauren Faust, whose less gender focused approach to the show’s storytelling garnered a positive critical reception among analysts and animation fans.

Unicorn Twilight Sparkle’s day to day life studying the nature of magic and friendship with the newfound friends that helped her save the world brought a unique character driven vision self aware of everything its franchise represented but presented it all with an infectious sincerity unseen in much of the modern landscape of children’s animation that attracted a less traditional demographic of adult animation fans that have reveled in the surprise success of its efforts since launching roughly 7 years ago.

From personal experience, I can say that although I’ve watched it clearly struggle with its unintentional evolution from a simple slice of life kids show expected to barely last a single 26 episode season into a bizarre 8 season and counting franchise juggernaut and cult phenomenon, there’s a certain soft spot that I hold in my heart for “Friendship is Magic” as the epitome of pleasant surprise, even if my fascination with the show and its phenomenon has died down over the last few years.

Say What?!

It’s with that admiration in mind that my reluctance toward the release of “My Little Pony: The Movie” was met with all of the factors, both positive and negative, that have nurtured this growing sense of ambivalence towards Hasbro’s modern venture of the roughly 3½ decade old franchise.

Set in the land of Equestria during a Festival of Friendship, the festivities are interrupted by the arrival of Tempest Shadow (Emily Blunt), herald of the evil Storm King (Liev Schreiber).With his forces at work to take over Equestria, Twilight and her friends leave their homeland to explore the world at large in search of assistance in freeing their homes and loved ones from his grip.

Signal's always busy even with magic

For better or worse, “My Little Pony: The Movie” is a feature length episode of the series. For children and fans, it’s likely to scratch the itch that they go in to have satisfied but the uninitiated will more than likely be left mildly confused.

Sea ponies exist? huh, who knew.

As somebody that actually had an inkling of what was going on, I personally found myself more confused as to the decision to push this towards a theatrical release and underwhelmed by what the boost in production resources actually added to the film.

I mentioned before that one of the substantial flaws of the show is that it has struggled with evolving from a basic slice of life animated sitcom for children into a production with more longevity that leans more heavily on the fantasy element of its setting. The core cast of 6 characters, Twilight, Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash have all had stretched out character arcs leaning on their defining traits that have kind of been capped by them more or less achieving several of the major goals that have defined them since their introduction.

And therein lies the problem with a lot of the franchise’s current storytelling; It’s working with characters that have become fairly boring because they’ve developed themselves beyond the spotlight that they need to occupy.

For several seasons, the show has attempted to circumvent this to varying degrees by introducing new characters, elements, mythology, and plot devices to diversify things but they’ve never really added necessary variety to the core direction of the show.

For 24 minutes on television, this can still manage to be tolerable at worst. For an hour and a half on the silver screen however, it cuts to the heart of everything being done right and wrong by the talent behind it.

First and foremost, that main cast of 6 ponies, barring Twilight herself as mandated by plot, are more or less loads in their own feature. Their perspective adds little to the adventure beyond a sort of romanticized high adventure mentality that Twilight herself is chastised for calling out despite her concerns of safety and reservation being completely valid.

A movie held together by the endeavors of borderline non-characters is problematic enough but it really comes to a head when you get to bask in the respectful amount of creativity everywhere else.

The characterization and animation on their roguish enemy turned ally Capper, the grand reveal behind the fate of the Hippogriffs whose help they seek, Emily Blunt’s surprisingly invested performance as Tempest Shadow, and a lot of tidbits of design for the world that they all inhabit that get by on genuine inspiration or sheer WTF factor at the very least are all actually fun, inspired and far more interesting than the stuff involving the main cast and their setting and it’s this clash of factors where the movie truly suffers.

“Friendship is Magic” has suffered from wasting cool concepts for quite a while but the containment within its own medium along with the promise of bringing them back to examine in the future makes it a little bit more palatable.

The concepts introduced in “My Little Pony: The Movie,” despite arriving from out of nowhere take full advantage of the resources put behind their theatrical release and are all the better for it. The stuff imported from television just feels like a slightly upscaled version of something you could be watching at home without paying a $10 ticket to see, and not necessarily for the better, as the simplistic designs of the television series can look more than a little off putting with the full articulation of a theatrical animation budget.

The film is briskly paced, knows exactly who its audience is, and still has that certain charming lack of cynicism in its storytelling that made it stand out at the height of its popularity, while also continuing the tradition of having the occasionally funny background gags for those allowing their eyes to wander.

It’s not without merit on those grounds alone but where I probably take more issue with it is its release model, rolling out in theaters for a proper mainstream release for an audience that isn’t guaranteed to justifiably carry it at the box office, nor does it have the audacity to torpedo its own canon the way similar productions for theatrically released cartoons have (looking at you 1985’s “The Transformers: The Movie”). All of this additionally at a time in which we are living in a streaming renaissance.

If anything, it could have been alot worse

A Netflix original release for this probably would have still given it the production bump that it needed and would have been an organic extension of its franchise’s current release model, which would have made me far less reluctant to call cash grab, especially when the film contains almost a season’s worth of ideas that could have easily helped to revitalize the show itself.

An inspiration and one of the main reasons I started writing about films, Jordan Wright is a fellow film critic and a Texas- A&M-Commerce alum where I also attended. We both wrote for the University's Newspaper The East Texan reviewing the good and bad of cinema.   

Visit his site Crit Hit, popping the hood of mainstream media from theatrical flicks and Direct-to-DVD material that range from passable to complete garbage. Check it out as well as my thoughts on the My Little Pony Movie at http://riderscrithit.blogspot.com/2017/10/my-little-pony-movie-review-featuring.html