Lauren
Faust’s My Little Pony: Friendship is
Magic is a loving reimagining of the Pony universe which began life in 2010
as a new generation of MLP, centering on the unicorn Twilight Sparkle (voiced
by Tara Strong) and her adventures discovering the wonders of friendship as she
embarks on various quests to keep the pony home country, Equestria, safe from
anything threatening it. By her side through it all are a huge cast of
characters which include Twilight’s best friends – together, they are generally
referred to as the “Mane Six” – and her young dragon pal, Spike. The television
series has become massively popular, with fans of all ages and genders, so a
theatrical full-length feature film was an inevitability for Equestria’s
intrepid equine heroes.
Hasbro’s
Allspark Studios upped the ante with the movie’s design, animating with
ToonBoom rather than the Adobe Flash of the series; this made for gorgeous,
lushly dimensional animation, but was a little bit distracting at first,
particularly because the characters’ designs looked so out of the ordinary.
Seeing such ultra-detailed bodies and enormous faceted eyes on characters
designed originally to be simple yet expressive is a bit jarring, although the
added breadth – especially with facial and ear movements – does make for a
wider berth of expression. The familiar characters of the Mane Six, and many
other denizens of Equestria serving cameos throughout the film, are joined by a
host of new characters, expanding the series’ universe and deepening the well
for its lore.
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| Alright! Which one of you ponies brought the hallucinogenics?!!!! |
The movie
story is a typical one for MLP: Equestria’s most powerful princesses are endangered
by a power-hungry foe after their magic, Twilight Sparkle and her friends must
stick together and find a way to brave the elements and save their home,
learning valuable friendship lessons along the way and encountering strange and
colorful characters all the while. It’s nothing new to anyone who has seen the
show, but in a franchise that started as a toy line, it’s really marketing
these new characters that matters most – so it’s more interesting to focus on
them than on the formulaic narrative. People are not, at this point, going to
expect too much originality in an MLP movie – although a cameo character called
Songbird Serenade (voiced by Sia), and her award-bait song to close the film,
is a nice enough touch.
The most
unique, and compelling, of the characters introduced in the movie is Tempest
Shadow, a unicorn who sports a facial scar and broken horn who plays
second-banana to the main villain, the Storm King. Tempest, voiced by Emily
Blunt, is a hell of a lot more interesting than her boss – who, really, seems
unnecessary as a character. He hardly makes any real kind of impression, being
altogether sillier than any other MLP villain – he doesn’t even seem to
understand what the magic he so covets actually does, or how to use it once
he’s attained it, and it is Tempest who seems more like an actual opposition to
the Mane Six, especially because she is, herself, a pony. It is her dark and
troubled past that fuels her desire to serve any dark magic that might make her
whole again, making her far more complex and fascinating. The film would have
done better to focus on her as a villain, and step away from the ridiculous
power-hungry wizard-with-dopey-sidekicks tropes, especially since anyone coming
to the film without having read the prequel comic books don’t really get a
sense of the magnitude of the Storm King’s brutality. If the lands outside
Equestria have been suffering under his reign prior to Tempest’s invasion of
Canterlot, for most viewers, that knowledge comes out of nowhere.
As far as
animated features based on Saturday-morning cartoons go, MLP could be a lot
worse. It is gorgeously and lovingly animated, peppered with the kinds of songs
one expects, and there is a surprising element to its ending that keeps it from
being too saccharine – which is quite a feat for a film starring adorable, Technicolor
ponies with enormous doe eyes whose greatest power is the magic of friendship.
Score
Dana Culling