Special Re-Review: Equestria Girls: Movie Magic (Magical Movie Night, Part 2) · 5:32pm March 9th
Despite this and "Dance Magic" and "Mirror Magic" being made part of the same story, different writers penned all three specials. This one was written by Noelle Benvenuti, who had been absent from the writing scene since the lackluster "Made in Manehattan" that we now know was changed from its original planned story involving Flim and Flam. A shame, rather. But more likely, real world problems were to blame for Noelle's abrupt absence, given that her mother died suddenly in 2014, not unlike the way Charlotte Fullerton's husband died suddenly in 2011, likely serving as the catalyst to bring on Merriweather Williams. This is the last thing Noelle would ever pen for G4, rather weird that it would be Equestria Girls and not FiM. In any case, despite now knowing that "Dance Magic" was originally going to take place before "Legend of Everfree", the special couldn't pass for anything other than okay at best. This second act of the three part specials from 2017 seems to get the most praise of the bunch, though since "Forgotten Friendship" came along a year later it seems to have been forgotten. Did this special succeed where "Dance Magic" couldn't in getting Equestria Girls off the ground? Well, let's find out.
The special begins with what turns out to be the filming of a human Daring Do movie, which human Rainbow Dash interrupts to suggest that it be more accurate to the source material. We also learn that the Rainbooms were invited onto the movieset by the director, Canter Zoom, as thanks for saving Camp Everfree. But there's no other attempts to tie it back to that special, this feels very tacked on. Anyway, Canter Zoom gets called away when one of his assistants mentions that some of the costumes for the next shoot have gone missing. Coincidentally, human Rarity and human Fluttershy go to see the lead actress: Chestnut Magnifico, and overhear her complaining on the phone to her agent about how she wants something "shut down". Meanwhile, the other Rainbooms go off to do their own thing: Sci-Twi and Rainbow Dash want to check out the props designed by A. K. Yearling herself, Sunset and Applejack want to see a volcano replica, and Pinkie Pie and Spike just wanna hit the buffet table to stuff themselves ala Shaggy and Scooby-Doo style.
Sunset and Applejack happen to notice a discarded candy wraper lying on the set near the prop volcano, and Sci-Twi and Rainbow Dash meet Juniper Montage, Canter Zoom's niece who serves as his gofer. She quickly mentions that she knows the ins and outs of the studio, and has keys to access any part of it whenever she wants. Three guesses as to what's going to happen to her as a result.
As for Pinkie Pie and Spike, they end up eating candy bars that were meant for Chestnut Magnifico, who was in the middle of a contract negotiation with Canter Zoom. Soon afterward, when the Rainbooms all regroup, the volcano set collapses and some of the other props for the movie have mysteriously gone missing. Rarity proposes they just make new props, but Canter Zoom says they can't with A. K. Yearling's approval. To make matters worse, Chestnut's contract is just about to expire, leading Canter Zoom to fear that production on the Daring Do movie will be permanently halted, risking it becoming a lost film. Sci-Twi naturally deduces that someone's trying to sabotage the movie in order to shut it down.
So it is that the Rainbooms take a page right out of Fred Jones' playbook and split up.
Not long after they do, a mysterious hooded figure is spotted. And Rainbow Dash chases after her using her geode power. Alas, the figure manages to get away. Coincidentally, the others say they weren't able to find Chestnut Magnifico anywhere. Just then, the Rainbooms are abruptly put into costume by a director who mistakes them for actors. It just so happens that a Power Ponies movie is also being filmed here, called the Power People. They decide to keep the costumes when they spot the hooded figure again, chasing it and losing it as they end up on another movie set, this one a Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs knock off that just so happens to be Pinkie Pie's favorite movie, because why would it be anything else?
This time, the hooded figure manages to trap all the Rainbooms in a net, except for Rainbow Dash. Rather than stay to rescue her friends, however, she decides to chase after the figure to try capture them.
Of course, it backfires as although Rainbow finds the missing props in a storage locker, the hooded figure lured her there on purpose and locks her in.
And Rainbow can't call for help, because all the Rainbooms' cell phones got confiscated by security. Fortunately, because of the movieset she was on, she left behind a trail of chocolate pudding footmarks, which leads the other Rainbooms to her. Sci-Twi manages to bust Rainbow out using her telekentic powers, and after seeing the location of the props, she more or less deduces who the culprit must be. She then takes the lead in plotting a trap to lure out the thief.
The trap involves the Rainbooms meeting with Canter Zoom, Chestnut, and Juniper, and ask for permission to look for clues. Canter agrees, ordering Chestnut to get into make-up while sending Juniper to get smoothies. Soon afterward, the hooded figure tries to move the props to another location and gets caught. Who's the culprit? Juniper Montage.
What's her motivation for doing all of this? She wanted to be cast as Daring Do instead of Chestnut, not because she thought Chestnut was a bad fit or anything but because she believed she should play the lead role despite having zero acting experience. And she believed that if she just hid the props until Chestnut's contract would expire, her uncle would fire Chestnut and turn to Juniper rather than cancel the project all together.
Naturally, Canter Zoom is quite upset with this and kicks Juniper off the set all together, firing her from her role of gofer. Juniper is escorted away, looking rather furious with the Rainbooms for foiling her plans, thus setting up her turn to the dark side in the next special.
So what was Chestnut demanding be "shut down" when she was talking with her agent earlier? An unspecified documentary that she wasn't interested in. With that obligation freed up, she's now willing to commit to a contract extention to play Daring Do. And as a reward for helping him out, Canter Zoom makes the Rainbooms extras in his movie. Except Rainbow Dash ends up talking and ruins the shot.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the special? Well, it's good at being a Scooby Doo homage, and I wish they'd embraced that more than they ended up doing. As a matter of fact, I believe this is the last special that actually bothers to make any use of the Rainbooms powers besides Sunset Shimmer's ability to read people's memories by touching them. There's definitely some good humor. But the humanized Daring Do and Power Ponies sets feel like window dressing. They could be turned into anything and nothing of substance would be lost. It is interesting that the Rainbooms stayed in costume rather than immediately discarding them, but they didn't do so because they thought of using it as a cover for their superpowers. The connection to "Dance Magic" feels arbitrary. This really could've worked as a stand alone thing. All the Rainbooms get a chance to shine within the group. Really, the only thing that really drags this special down is Juniper Montage. Even as a Scooby Doo inspired villain, she's painfully obvious and her motivation is completely nonsensical. What makes her think that she, a teenager with zero acting experience, will be made lead actor in a movie just because her uncle's the director?
It only gets worse knowing how insufferable and pathetic she would be as a villain in the next special, and that the Equestria Girls franchise would somehow find a way to do even worse than that later on. I know that the Dazzlings and Principal Cinch were tough acts to follow, especially when you had movies and specials premiring with little fanfare, but there had to be a way to make better villains for the Rainbooms. It really does feel like Starlight Glimmer was a tipping point for quality, almost every villain that came after her failed for one reason or another, and it's really saying something when they ended up reusing villains more frequently whereas before they had only done so once via flashback. I don't hold that against this special too much, Juniper still is at least decent here. If her motivations were changed slightly and it wasn't made so obvious that she was the villain, she would work. Honestly, I wish they had scrapped both "Dance Magic" and "Mirror Magic" and fleshed this out more, leaning more heavily into the Scooby Doo vibes. You could extend the chase scenes across multiple sets and have many other things go wrong, adding to the list of suspects who might want filming shut down so as to give the audience more convincing red herrings. As it is, this special gets a borderline B+/A-. With the exception of "Forgotten Friendship", it was all going to be more or less downhill for the Equestria Girls franchise from this point onward, even their spin-off series on YouTube would fail to leave much of an impact, as can be evidenced by Hasbro abruptly pulling the plug on it.
*Sigh*, well, now it's on to the unbelievably bad third act of "Magical Movie Night" in the form of "Mirror Magic". And believe me, Juniper Montage being a terrible villain in her own right will be the least of the special's problems.
This is a pretty fun special.
But man, you and I have VERY different feelings on Mirror Magic
Personally, the main thing I couldn’t help but wish was that they did an episode special of EG Rarity being a detective. “The Case of the Bedazzled Boot” confirmed that Rarity previously got to be a detective before the CYOE episode aired, so I would’ve loved for them to do a Detective Rarity special that took place before it.
Spoiler alert: This is the best of the Magical Movie Night specials because it's the only one whose story is not a rehash of an episode from the parent series.
No, the production assistant very clearly referred to them as the Power Ponies. Remember, the villain of the Daring Do movie was named Stalwart Stallion.
But speaking of this scene, during the Roundtable is Magic discussion of this special, ToonKriticY2K as CarToonZ criticized how Sunset got type-casted as the Mane-iac, claiming that the joke of reminding people she used to be a villain had gotten old by that point. Key Frame even brought up how the joke might've been funnier in an ironic sense if they made Sci-Twi the Mane-iac and Sunset the Masked Matter-Horn. What do you think?