Equestria Girls Review

Intro/Overview

I bit the bullet last night and watched My Little Pony: Equestria Girls. Gotta love people who tape things at the theater and stick them up on YouTube... And no, I'm not gonna lie about how I saw it for reasons that will become clear in my review.

Beware my swearing and sarcasm.

Stick around after the review for a very short Altador Cup Update and Housekeeping section.

SPOILER WARNING

If you have not seen My Little Pony: Equestria Girls and are actually worried about spoilers, don't read the following review. It's more spoiler-tastic than my other reviews because I can't properly air my grievances without discussing certain plot points in detail.

My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - Review

Essentially, Equestria Girls was better than I thought it would be, but it's still crap. There were parts I liked, but they were very much overshadowed by the parts I didn't like.

The first of many things I did not like was Rainbow Dash throwing down an ultimatum and then completely ignoring it because "determination" and stuff... I thought is was fairly obvious that Twilight Sparkle was complete crap at sports in general. Dashie challenging Twilight to a sports-related competition would be like Pegasus Dashie challenging Unicorn Twilight to a flying competition. Good job making Twilight think you weren't going to help because you're a much better athlete than she is, Dash. Good. Job. That entire scene was just there to fill screen time and it bugged the hell out of me.

Sunset Shimmer a) being able to hack all the "Mane Five"'s cell phones and e-mails and then b) no one actually talking to each other about what went on in the texts and e-mails. Apparently the Human-Pony universe does not have great tech security or caller-ID... Not to mention that entire plot point came off as a PSA that may or may not actually have relevance. I don't know, I'm not entirely tech-savvy.

Apparently, though they manage to do it a couple times in the movie, the "Mane Five" don't run into each other in person all that often and are petty enough not to actually talk to their friends about their problems. Nope, not at all advocating talking to people in person over text and email. Nope, not at all.

Also, that "technology 'ruins' lives" plot has been so overdone by now it's ridiculous. I remember watching A Walk to Remember when I was in junior high and bad Photoshopping/Photocopying was used as a tool to break down the protagonist. I'd site other movies that use this method, but I stopped watching high school movies when I was actually in high school so... I can't remember them off the top of my head. I remember seeing the plot a hundred times over, I just can't remember the particular movies so... yeah...

Which brings me to my next thing: Equestria Girls was a high school movie. I'm clearly not the target demographic here, I realize that. I also realize the entire point of the movie was so Hasbro could have a property that competed with Monster High. I'm aware of all of this, but, if you're going to title a movie "My Little Pony: Equestria Girls" perhaps you should have more PONY in it than at either end of the movie. The completely random, would have actually been really weird in real life, totally took me out of the movie dance number in the middle was weird, even if there were ear-headbands and tie-on tails. Still not enough pony. The title might have been better served by the Generation 1 My Little Pony Tales characters than the Generation 4 My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic characters. At least My Little Pony Tales had ponies in school.

The last thing on my "I hated this" list is the big show-down scene at the end of the movie; starting with Sunset Shimmer threatening to kill the statue/portal with a sledgehammer. There was absolutely not tension here because there was no way Sunset Shimmer was actually going to destroy the portal. I also didn't think it was necessary for her to transform into that... goblin-like beast-thing. There also wasn't any point to having Snips and Snails transformed into those things as well. The "Mane Six" transformations bugged me, too. I felt like I was watching Sailor Moon gone wrong. But no, Hasbro had to make sure it was crystal clear that these humans were linked to their pony counterparts by turning them into anthropomorphic representations of their pony counterparts. Gotta make-em look like the toys! ... Yeah... DO NOT WANT.

My little niggle: Celestia and Luna as humans looked terrible. Their pony counterparts are much more elegant looking than the frumpy humans we got. Also, who the hell came up with adding tiny crown-like bits to their hair? It looked so weird!

On the bright side:

• "The Great and Powerful Trixie" was a giant dork.
• Vinyl Scratch's eyes were revealed again... for no reason.
• Pinkie Pie is Pinkie Pie whether she's pony or human.
• Lots of Luna!
• Scootaloo got to fly with Dashie... also for no reason.
• I was, for some unknown reason, not expecting to see a human Big Mac.
• Twilight sleeps on books.
• Most everyone's characters were mostly intact.

Yeah, the movie wasn't a complete disaster. It wasn't the pony movie I'd been hoping for, but it wasn't complete torture to watch. I will not be buying, or getting other people to buy, the Equestria Girls dolls because they're creepy. I like ponies.

Altador Cup Update

The Altador Cup is over. Final scores have yet to be announced. The Prize Shop has yet to open.

Housekeeping

Hopefully I'll get to watch Defiance and Warehouse 13 tonight and get up Initial Reactions for Warehouse 13. I'm super excited to see Anthony Stewart Head back on American television. Yes, I know he was in Merlin, but that's a British show and so doesn't count.

Love ya, Jessie.