My Little Pony: Equestria Girls

For a start... it definitely did not warrant a theatre release.

No additional effort was put into the animation beyond the TV series other than the opening credits animation, at all. Would have been a nice two-parter to link the existing My Little Pony seasons 3 and 4 together.

Two, it's so obvious the entire movie is a giant advertisement for Hasbro to sell anthro-based dolls based on popular characters. The way the characters are introduced and stylised, it's just glaring and grating.

The basic story? As predictable as ever, even for a MLP episode. Which is fine for a MLP episode, but not for a movie, hence back to my original belief it didn't warrant a theatre release. The fact that it's set in such a tedious and over-used setting as a school formal? Awful. So much opportunity for this to have been done better was wasted on a cliché. The ponies are regressed to teenage years when in Ponyville they are already mares, ie mature. The movie should have reflected this, and used it to encourage girls (and guys) in a more positive direction than what it does.

The writing was about as standard as the series, but I'm disappointed with the whole image of the movie. Everyone is thin and anaemic, with the exception of Snails, and lo and behold, the unpopular "bad guy henchman" is fat. The ONLY fat person in the entire movie. In the series, all the ponies are rounded, or at least full-bodied; all this movie does is perpetuate the stick-insect mentality of fashion that girls are now being encouraged to pursue. Which leads to...

Concepts of friendship are nice to see in this movie, and I'm glad they are there. But the series does a much better job of teaching those concepts in a manner that isn't muddied by imagery that is counter-productive to many children's' self-esteem. This movie is a step backwards for the quality of the show, not a step forwards.

So, overall? Poor. It *could* have been so much more. Instead, we got dreck. It's 4, perhaps a 5 out of 10. For the absolute littlies only, and I say that with hesitation given the body-image impressions it's setting up for them.

I hope this stays a one-off, and is never attempted again.