Plenty of sparkle, but missing some magic

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/10/2017 (3267 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This pony-centric animated adventure may not be the best movie of the year. It is, however, the sparkliest.

Based on the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic television series, which is in turn based on a line of Hasbro toys aimed at young girls, this cheerfully underachieving movie offers a shimmery cascade of pink, purple and mauve, as well as flowers, magic jewels, rainbows and very brushable manes and tails.

The key to the TV show has always been that, under all that stereotyped girliness, there is a refreshingly sincere message about the power of co-operation, self-development and self-confidence.

This girl-powered lack of cynicism, combined with some self-aware humour, has allowed the series to connect with its core audience while becoming a bit of a breakout hit. In particular, My Little Pony has scored some surprising cross-demographic success with the so-called Bronies, adult males who just love their ponies.

Unfortunately, the movie gets the sweetness but needs more of the TV series’ sass.

Its stretched-out story also struggles to justify a 99-minute runtime. The cupcake-sized charms of a 22-minute My Little Pony episode don’t scale up well. “I hate epic adventures,” an exhausted pony complains at one point, and she’s probably not the only one.

The movie starts out in recognizable My Little Pony mode. Our smart, plucky pony heroine, Princess Twilight Sparkle (Tara Strong), is busy party-planning — cakes, music, decorations! — for a Friendship Festival in Canterlot, the capital city of Equestria. Her celebration is crashed by Tempest Shadow (Emily Blunt, one of the big-name stars augmenting My Little Pony’s stable of reliable voice actors).

“All this power, wasted on parties,” sneers Tempest Shadow, who signals her evil intentions by her non-pastel colour scheme. In the service of the Storm King (Liev Schreiber) — “I’m so totally over cute ponies,” this dire villain declares — Tempest captures the benevolent rulers of Equestria.

Only Twilight manages to escape, and along with her pals, the other members of the Mane Six, she heads out on a quest for help, crossing deserts, flying through the sky, swimming oceans, occasionally breaking into song. (The big production numbers feature trippy animation but fairly forgettable music.)

The ponies navigate the stranger-danger of a big bad city, running into a rather sneaky feline (Taye Diggs). They get into a kerfuffle with some parrot pirates — sorry, they prefer the term “swashbuckling treasure-hunters” — led by Zoe Saldana.

All this slightly scary, very busy and mostly generic action seems very non-My Little Pony, somehow. Put it this way: Fluttershy — she’s the timid pony — frequently gets scared on this long journey, and so might some younger tots.

More on-brand are the well-intentioned messages about the power of friendship and the importance of finding your special talent and just doing your best.

Unfortunately, these lessons don’t seem to extend to the filmmakers. My Little Pony: The Movie may not be terrible, but it simply has no compelling reason — beyond more sparkly, rainbow-coloured merchandising tie-ins — for this leap onto the big screen.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca