My Little Pony - Friendship Is Magic: Equestria Girls

Rating:

My expectations when the Equestria Girls project was announced were unsurprisingly low, which no doubt colors this review a bit.  Despite hoping to skip a possible spin-off series, the movie that ended up coming out unfortunately features the entire My Little Pony crew and takes place directly after the third season finale.  That means it’s canon even if the series proper doesn't reference any events.  Professional retconner Meghan McCarthy took charge of the scripts herself, and at least she’s more competent than certain other writers on the staff.  With a plethora of unnecessary archetype characters and incredibly easy plot resolutions again on tap, this new movie was not likely a worthwhile use of my apparently dirt cheap time.

Naturally then, Equestria Girls is surprisingly enjoyable and easily better than most of McCarthy’s two-parters for the series.  Unfortunately, the same problems found in A Canterlot Wedding and The Crystal Empire are still present, which includes yet another retconned character and a dire situation that just works itself out somehow.  However, these are eased by scenes of Twilight actually having to deal her recent addition of wings and royal duties along with the dynamics of the Equestria Girls high school being in a parallel dimension.  Not that they solve everything (and the bland songs add nothing to what’s going on), but Equestria Girls has a depth that was missing from McCarthy’s earlier work.

Even without a supporting series, Equestria Girls pretty clearly serves as a pilot for the project.  To that end, it follows the actual pilot of My Little Pony rather closely at points.  Each of the mane six are introduced separately (including a very similar exchange with Fluttershy), and the “magic of friendship” not only brings them together but is key in defeating the main villain.  Although the Ponyville Twilight will be remaining in her own universe, an open ending allows for both the possibility of either EG Twilight (mentioned but not seen) or even defeated villain Sunset Shimmer taking over her role.  This essentially makes Equestria Girls a crossover pilot from its own show rather than having a completely different one set up the new series.

We start in the “real” Equestria of course, as Twilight and Co. are on their way to the Crystal Empire for a princess summit.  It’s probably best to ignore that this summit is yet another retcon creation, and there’s no way one would be held anywhere but Canterlot (perhaps a stray tourist convinced Celestia to move from her preferred location).  No doubt some discussion should happen regarding Twilight being named a princess, but unfortunately we have a while to wait yet.  Spike can take a train to the Crystal Empire and return in an afternoon, but now the trip has ballooned into an all-day affair for our beloved mane six.  Before any plot can happen, the visiting ponies are swiftly sent to bed.  Although this usually ends all the fun, we do see Twilight struggling to find a comfortable bed position with her new wings.  While most of the bronies will probably chuckle instead of understand, I share Twilight’s pain when her wingboner pops the blanket off.

After the break, a mysterious pony sneaks into Twilight’s room and makes off with her element tiara.  She does get caught (in an unexpected way), but having a head start and magic allows her to escape after all.  Twilight sacks her into a mirror room, but this pony fumbles the tiara into one of them, which reveals itself to be a portal somewhere.  The pony jumps into the mirror as well, leaving the confused mane six wondering what just happened.  Princess Plot Convenience explains that the pony is Sunset Shimmer, an earlier student of hers who she just neglected to mention for some reason.  Princess Trusting goes on to detail that she always hoped Shimmer would suddenly switch to good and return to Equestria, while the mirror (which leads to some other dimension) was moved to the Crystal Empire for an inexplicable reason.

Since Twilight is clearly at fault for losing her tiara (and not the guards on duty Sunset Shimmer snuck by who are paid to prevent this sort of thing from happening), Celestia immediately banishes Twilight into this other realm with no explanation as to what it is or any time to prepare.  Because supervising is the most important part of leading, there was no chance that any of the other three princesses present who actually know what is beyond the mirror were going to offer to go instead or help Twilight out.  Naturally the mane six volunteer to tag along (since you never let someone do something by themselves in a TV episode), but Princess Too-Lazy-To-Get-Off-Her-Hot-Ass-And-Save-Her-Own-World denies them as well.  There does turn out to be a fairly solid reason for this, but it’s still an incredible burden to just throw on Twilight.  Fortunately for her, she’s very used to that by now.  And also Spike jumps into the mirror too, because (as I just said) you don’t send someone alone in a TV show since they will either have to talk to themselves or shut up and say nothing for the entire adventure.  Even if it’s a cliché by now, the alternative just doesn’t work.

Twilight of course arrives in a human version of Equestria, and the portal in this world is a statue on a high school grounds.  One of the more effective scenes follows as Twilight must suddenly get used to being a creature which she has never known existed before.  Despite wearing a rather cute short skirt and a Stocking (from Panty & Stocking With Garterbelt) wig, Twilight remains on all fours since that’s the only way she’s ever stood.  After deciding to head into the “castle”, Spike (who has turned into a dog) hops aboard as Twilight gallops inside.  They soon catch sight of a guy walking his dog normally (outside of high school during class), and Twilight quickly adopts the correct posture.  For perhaps the first time in a McCarthy script, this actually isn’t so simple at first.  Who can say whether walking should have been or not given that her body didn’t exist in the dimension until a few moments earlier, but thankfully Twilight doesn’t have an easy time because something like that rarely goes well initially.  After lucking through so many of McCarthy’s earlier adventures, Twilight mercifully turns out to be human after all (yeah, you see what I did there, blaaah).

Even admitting I don’t know what it’s like at a high school now, McCarthy’s version seems like she doesn’t either.  As usual, Canterlot High is perpetually in class change, but there are no hall monitors or any other teachers/administrators who notice a strange new student just randomly roaming the halls.  Twilight does manage to have a meet cute during the “standing around between classes” montage, although her venture into the boys’ bathroom would have actually been more likely to produce another one than induce screams on the part of the unsuspecting guy.  Had the genders been reversed, this intrusion would have of course been more unwanted, but most straight guys wouldn’t mind if a hot chick like Twilight happened to wander into the loo.

A chance encounter during class change kicks off the main plot regarding how Twilight is going to get her element tiara back.  She sees a colorful student interrogating a shy human that looks an awful lot like Fluttershy, who found the tiara and turned it into the principal’s office.  This other student, Sunset Shimmer, had stolen the crown before but neglected to take it back in herself to the current dimension.  With another theft apparently not an option, Shimmer will just wait to be awarded the tiara at an upcoming school dance.  It’s only a couple of days away, but (as she learns after talking to a more subdued Principal Celestia) Twilight can still throw her hat into the ring in a typical bravura attempt to save the world through unlikelihood.

After catching up with Fluttershy during lunch, Twilight meets the rest of the mane six in a somewhat similar fashion to the pilot.  This isn’t quite as compelling as the first time since we know them and aren’t surprised to find they exist, but how they look and act in a different world is still interesting.  Mostly they’ve fallen into similar activities and have the same traits (Pinkie Pie picks a balloon decoration off of her skirt and blows it up), and Twilight later discovers the five used to be friends freshman year but have since had a falling out.  So Twilight’s goal for the rest of the movie is to reunite her friends and somehow take the top prize at the dance while only going to that school for three days.

The introspective moments unquestionably make Equestria Girls better than McCarthy’s contemporaneous offerings, but she again suffers from some weird and easy plot developments.  Since Twilight doesn’t have a home here, she ends up spending the night at the library.  This happens because it apparently stays open well past school hours, and “no one ever comes up here”.  Every library I’ve ever been to has someone walk around the entire place to make sure this exact thing doesn’t happen, but I guess the employees conveniently didn’t feel like doing that this time.  Nor do they notice when she’s still there in the morning.  As a veteran librarian herself, perhaps Twilight kindly opened the library as payment for sleeping on a bed of books.  Naturally this is just supposed to be a fun idea, but it’s shown to be completely normal when Twilight could easily have faced charges for trespassing or something else.  McCarthy passing such events off as no big deal with the movie set in a human world and ostensibly geared toward children is odd.  Additionally, the montage that quickly turns public opinion around on Twilight and brings school spirit to every student would in reality have probably accomplished nothing.

Since season four isn’t missing a main cast member, the ending won’t exactly come as a surprise, although at least how it happens is not very predictable.  And that’s indicative of Equestria Girls as a whole, since the good moments are also interspersed with a lot of bad ones.  There are too many easy solutions and montages, and the forced meet cute with perfect guy Flash Sentry leads to a lot of awkwardness as well.  For a group supposedly driven apart, the mane six sure spend a lot of time together, and the misunderstandings that caused the rift probably shouldn’t have taken years to uncover.  Putting both Celestia and Luna into principal roles doesn’t make sense either and weakens both parts, because Celestia clearly should have just been the only one in charge.  Also problematic is the overuse of certain words, like Rainbow Dash describing everything as “awesome” when a different word needed to be used somewhere.

Still though, Equestria Girls is more enjoyable than it should be given the flaws and shaky premise.  McCarthy had time to explore the inner struggles Twilight is going through after her recent transformation, and the large amount of material referenced from the pilot feels more like a knowing nod to the fans rather than a ripoff.  Sunset Shimmer is too much of a stock villain to be a compelling lead character, although Twilight’s mentioned but unseen counterpart in this world might like to know what her “evil twin” was up to.  At the very least, Equestria Girls is an enjoyable diversion whose negatives don’t entirely distract from the overall experience.  It marks a small step in the right direction for McCarthy, who has too much power and needs to hear some criticism for her frankly average work on the show.  She gets the characters well enough but lacks a sense of story that doesn’t revolve around clichés and easy solutions.  Finding reflective time for Twilight is a nice addition that hadn’t existed in McCarthy’s earlier episodes, even though the opportunity for them disappears once Twilight finally meets up with her friends.  My Little Pony progress might have to be measured in Planck lengths, but some is made in Equestria Girls despite likely for the wrong reasons.