Originally posted at the DL April 2015
Hello my little barbie. But we'll save that rant for the original EQ. Anyway, welcome again to Canterlot High, Equestria's dumping ground for dangerous magical beings who we're totally pretty sure will lose their magic in human land. But hey, if we had a magic mirror to another realm we'd probably dump nuclear waste into it, so "mostly non magical land that will de-power our magical foes" is relatively responsible.
Back off topic. The movie spends an unfortunate amount of time on the inter-group tensions, which makes me think that they'll be using EQ, among other things, as a dumping ground for friendship lessons that don't really make sense five seasons into the character development on the main show. However, the villains directly encouraging this to feed on it is at least SOME attempt to make it palatable, and the villains are pretty effective in general, so we'll let that slide a bit.
What the show lacks in engaging character bits it does make up in two main areas. Sunset Shimmer becomes reasonably likable here, so that's good. But more directly they put some real effort into some of these songs. The main villain song, Battle, is pretty fun in a sort of Backstreet Boys meets Spice Girls way. Actually, in general they clearly put a lot of thought into giving everyone a distinct and recognizable musical style, and that endlessly catchy 90's callback with just a hint of sex appeal and darkness is so perfect for these villains, it seriously pulls the movie together.
Otherwise, as noted while the early going with sorta pat and strained character interaction was a bit of a miss. But they certainly knew how to END the movie, so 'sall good.
Grade: 7/10. Pretty typical of MLP stuff... exceppppttt
Prequel Shorts
Yessssss. These are uniformly great and remind me a lot of Tiny Toons, except with much better established and more consistent characters. Makes me wonder if having more episodes of the show which do shorts in this way, perhaps with some of the lesser cast members, wouldn't be a great idea because doing quick joke sequences is something they clearly know how to pull off. Although I've read they more or less ARE doing this for one of the upcoming Season 5 episodes.
Grade: 8/10. Yeah, the shorts definitely pull the movie up a point.
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