My Little Pony: Equestria Girls (2013) · 7:19am Aug 17th, 2016
So, I went to a wedding recently. It's the one time I can show up at a party and not feel obligated to apologize for the choices I make in drink preferences. Steel Reserve you say? Well if it's got reserve in it, it has to be good. Lord knows I needed it to get through this thing.
Service was fine, only one ambulance showed up this time so that was a record low for weddings I've attended and only four cop cars showed up which is the average. This time it wasn't for drunken disorderly but, trying to corral two of the groomsmen who had apparently snorted bath salts, but did manage strip naked and run amok. This occurred before the food came out but after the bar had opened. I didn't get involved because wasting a tasty beverage is a sin and I was laughing too hard at these two mensa members eluding the county's finest.
I'd known the bride years before. At one point I'd even thought of dating her. When I first met her she sort of looked like Meg Ryan but had an eye that kept wanting to escape her face. That wasn't the reason I didn't date her though. I didn't date her because she was also the kind of girl whose legs haven't been in the same state since early in high school. Her phone number is still in the men's room of every truck stop from here on the east coast to Rio Linda... in her handwriting. That said her husband to be wasn't great either.
He once said, "I'm the brains of this marriage," a statement that everyone involved in the wedding had a good chuckle at cause they thought it was the punchline. He's the kind of guy who if you turn the light off and then back on again he thinks it's the next day. He went into a room with a strobe light and thought fifty years had passed after about twenty minutes. One time he ate a raw egg and thought he was pregnant because he felt bloated. Of course he was relieved when it turned out to be gas. Nobody else was and we spent the rest of the night airing out the house.
I guess what I'm saying is they're the perfect couple. He's stupid and she's easy. Somehow, I have a feeling there's a reality show that'll be made of these two at some point. That would be regrettable.
Speaking of regrettable things that boggle the mind, a few years back Hasbro got it into its head that it needed to go to war against the Monster High School girls with their own brand of weird looking dolls. They figured, "Hell we've got a successful show and toy line let's make 'em human and make a movie about it set in high school!" Thus, My Little Pony: Equestria Girls came to be.
In this movie Twilight Sparkle gets her crown stolen while on princess vacation with her friends. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, you just go to the party store and get another one but, this crown had her element in it. If she'd been smart she'd have just left the damn thing at home and brought traveler's checks with her the same way any of us do when visiting a foreign country or Detroit.
So now she has to go through a magical portal thing turn human and get the crown back by winning the prom/homecoming/I quit paying attention at this point it's an Abba dancing Queen. However, she has two major hurdles to overcome, the first is Sunset Shimmer who is bad, wears a leather jacket and was looking to work on her animal husbandry skills with Brad/Flash Sentry. The second being a bunch of fans of the show who freaked out when a nice guy showed some attention to a nerdy girl who never had a guy pay attention to her and flipped out. Oh no!
They say he's bland. Well so is she. Twilight Sparkle is the equivalent of tepid oatmeal. She reads and organizes books and if it weren't for the fact that she has danger fall in her lap she'd never do anything other than that. At least Brad plays some form of guitar and has that C. Thomas Howell/Luke Perry vibe going for him. I say, let her have some dude pay for her dinner on occasion and hell Brad lives in an alternate dimension. What happens in human world STAYS in human world. If for some reason Flash in horse world likes her well that would be a surprise.
The initial hurdle though is her main problem and honestly, it serves as a problem for the movie itself. See, for the most part there really isn't a significant conflict here. The vast majority of what happens in this movie is summed up with montages. If they'd called this Montage: The Movie I couldn't have faulted it for false advertising. If there's something that needs to happen it's a montage. Part way through I was hoping for something like Carrie, Prom Night, or Courage the Cowardly Dog to happen. Give me a conflict. Give me drama. Don't just spring a demon fight on me at the end build up to it.
But there isn't any of that. Sunset Shimmer is never a real threat. She steals a crown and talks trash. Her big plan involves wrecking crate paper with the help of two half wits. You know how this could have been solved right away if you wanted to have Twilight go to human world? Easy. Twilight catches up to Sunset and demands the crown back. Sunset starts talking trash. Twilight punches her in the taco. Sunset falls over. She then smashes the case the crown is being held in, jets to the portal, zips back to her homeland and smashes the mirror. The end. Sometimes you have to be firm.
If you thought those 1980s Scooby-Doo movies were too edgy well this is your ticket right here. My Little Pony: Equestria Girls is a painfully dull sit. It lacks any real conflict or drama. It lacks any of the charm or fun of the original series and the one who got the most blame for it (Brad/Flash) deserves the least of it. This movie only serves two real purposes. The first, being a commercial for toys for little girls. Second, a way to distract your daughter for about twenty minutes while you grab your spouse and sneak a quiet quickie before she comes looking for you.
The Stats: 0 dead bodies (though the amount of daggers I stared at the screen would have killed them all), 0 breasts (duh), 0 interest, gratuitous cameos, gratuitous montages, magic fu, portal fu, high school fu, broom fu, dance fu.
Shoutouts:
MisterNick for sitting through this and not taking his 357 and playing Russian Roulette with every chamber filled after watching this.
The Broom for attempting to become the hardcore champion by hitting Fluttershy in the face.
Vincent Tong as Flash Sentry for being a nice dude to a girl who doesn't change her clothes after a few days and probably smells like cabbage.
Sunset Shimmer's leather jacket because leather jackets are always cool and it would be hilarious if she wore it back to Equestria on the show.
Loved the review and your a better man than I. I have never been able to make it through the first movie. I have been able to watch the other two but never the first.
No body count? No shout out\fu section?
4154504 It's there.
4154482 They made more? All of a sudden I find myself turning into an atheist. I'm gonna need currency or get some real self hatred going here to do those.
4154504
Well, Twilight manages to get everyone in the school to go anthro... Which, considering their school does not actually have a mascot, is pretty impressive.
So, Fur-conversion-fu.
As for body count... I'm going to say Sunset Shimmer. Because after all... Where is her EQG self? Dead, that's where!
Unless there's going to be a movie where EQG Sunset winds up immigrating to Equestria.
4154894 Well she didn't die in the movie. So I can't quite count that. It's completely plausible she stumbled into the portal at some point as a child. Heck her mom could have been pregnant in high school gave birth and dumped the baby who just so happened to fly on through some random magic mirror and prevented the pony version from being conceived. Anything's possible.
Mostly I just chalk it up to a plot hole. One of many.
4155703
I expect them to rectify it in the future. The question will just be how they do it.
4156656 Well, maybe they will. Honestly though, they still haven't fixed the whole "Princess Celestia knows diddly," aspect. I mean, way more often than she should her answer to anything is, "Uh I dunno. Go find out!"
4157529
She either knows, and is trolling, or is too old and senile to remember. Or do you mean in EQG?
Lol, this wedding sounds awesome...ly horrible? Yet hilarious? Am I terrible for thinking this?
I can't disagree with the substance of your criticism of EQG1, but I've found that it's grown on me with subsequent re-watchings. It's certainly not the pure liquid awesome of Rainbow Rocks, but it does a competent job of establishing the mirror universe and its rules. It's also the most tolerable appearance of the non-trivially charming Brad, who feels more like a 5th wheel in RR, and who ends up being downgraded even from wheel status in the third movie. It also bears the dubious distinction of not being the third movie, which I found deathly dull and a huge let-down after RR, with the sole exception of "Unleash the Magic," which was an OK song.
Now that's a name I haven't heard in a while.
Between that and Klaus Nomi Pony, I have to wonder... 
4159962 Oh I always leave folks wondering. To be both fact and fiction and a walking contradiction. Wow sort of quoted Kris Kristofferson there. Anyway, I've heard that Rainbow Rocks is much better. That said I don't think I have the stomach to sit through another of the movies. I'm already having a hard enough time dealing with the last two episodes which I generally liked but, man...
4161110 I'd definitely skip the 3rd if that's how you feel, but IMO, RR is worth a watch at some point. The Sirens are great bad guys, Maud makes an appearance, and who doesn't like (pop) rock?