Review of My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) by Logan E — 28 Oct 2017

This film is very firmly aimed at: a) families with young kids and b) existing fans. Why? Because those are the groups Hasbro wants to sell stuff to. It doesn't do a whole lot to win over audiences with no investment in MLP -- if you don't know why Twilight is a princess in the first place, you may be lost at times. That said, as an existing fan who's now seen it twice in the cinema... I have absolutely no regrets.

Nobody would call this a perfect film -- it has a few pacing problems, there are too many guest characters, the Mane Six's moments are unevenly distributed, the opening song is a pretty poor cover -- so if you go in hoping for a beautiful piece of timeless cinema, you'll be disappointed. If you go in hoping for 100 minutes of entertainment without having to concentrate too hard, you'll probably get your wish.

Despite its U rating in the UK, this may be a little too dark in places for the youngest kids; it's not all sweetness and light, but if you're familiar with the series you'll know that it can also feature scary and sad moments. The songs, at least those Daniel Ingram actually wrote, are about series-standard and do their job quite well, though they're not really the best things he's ever written.

The animation is fine once you get used to it not being the show's Flash style. Again, it's not going to win awards, but it serves its purpose well enough. There are a couple of places where ponies' faces look weird, from the front especially, but not enough to be a big deal. The voice acting is very good indeed, silly pony puns and all, but you'd expect that given the cast involved, both regular and guest.

This is probably a 3.5-star film for me in reality, but I'm bumping it up to four because I just had such fun watching it. If you have absolutely no idea what any of the pony stuff is about, then you might want to pass -- but if you're already an MLP fan and don't get too demanding, there's a pretty good chance you'll enjoy this. If you have MLP-loving kids who can deal with occasional scary scenes, the same applies.