Review of My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) by Shadowclaw G — 12 Oct 2017

Okay, so where to begin? First of all, I can honestly say that I enjoyed this movie. It was fun, it had some great music, wonderful animation, beautiful backgrounds, and an overall decent story. But it definitely has some problems. For starters, the pacing is a bit, bad. It seems fine at first, going at a reasonable pace, then all of a sudden it's "MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!" and then back to a reasonable pace for another 20 minutes then "MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!" all over again. This did not prevent me from enjoying this movie, but it was definitely noticeable. It just prevented the audience from being able to take in a lot of these new locations, which from what I saw were so beautifully done!

The new characters were overall decent, though Sia's appearance in the movie was so small, it shouldn't have been the main focus of a lot of the advertising. Her song was amazing, in fact all the songs were amazing. I feel like this music is some of Daniel Ingram's best work yet. The biggest issue with the characters and the songs is that we have a whole 25-30 minute section of the film where about four songs get played with very little footage between the sequences. Again this wasn't the worst thing ever as it made it feel more like a musical, and I do enjoy musicals! The new characters on the other hand? Most of them barely get enough screen time for us to really get to know them. I honestly feel as if some producer at Hasbro saw what they were making, which definitely has some promise, and said, "Oh no! We gotta make this faster or we'll lose the kid's attention!".

Overall, this movie was pleasing to the eye, and definitely was worth seeing! I've loved My Little Pony Friendship is Magic since I first discovered it back in 2011. This movie didn't fully meet my expectations, but it isn't the worst kids film out there. Which brings me to one last point, this was first and foremost made for kids. So I feel it definitely deserves some leeway, especially since this was the first time these writers and producers have done a fully theatrically released movie (as Equestria Girls and Rainbow Rocks were released only in select theaters). It definitely loses points for its pacing issues, and even a couple for the missed opportunities to explore some of these new characters. If I were to grade this movie using a total of 100 possible points, I would deduct 10 points for the issues with the pacing, and 5 points for the heavy lack of character development for the new characters. That leaves us with a final score of 85/100. A solid B, and an 8.5/10 here.