Saddle up, because My Little Pony: Equestria Girls is the Greatest Movie EVER!
Click on the poster or the title above to download our review of the film, featuring Kara Dennison of conscrewDOTcom and celebrity translator Neil Nadelman.
Review in a Nutshell: It’s tough to review Equestria Girls in a vacuum since it’s not so much a standalone film as an “Elseworlds” side-story packed with heavy fan-service and inside jokes. We were all pleasantly surprised that we enjoyed it.
The Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast 
Just saw this in my feed, Paul – this is actually a thing, huh?
It is indeed a thing. It’s not bad, either, but I’d say you have to be a fan of the show already to enjoy it.
thanks for the episode. first time hearing about this episode. first time i saw the trailer, reminds me that it has been a long time since transformers have an animated movie based on the cartoon and toy line.
I was wary of this movie too, but I enjoyed it. It was fun for the references and in-jokes, so it doesn’t establish a good model for future MLP:FiM film projects since those don’t work as well the 2nd time. It was fun, uplifting, and does provide some development for Twilight. I was both amused and somewhat worried by the inclusion of the 90-minute love story since it doesn’t work as well with the rest of the franchise.
I’ll probably own this someday, but only after my wife and I collect the television series first.
kl
Clicked on this the second it popped up in my subscriptions. Yes, this was definitely an attempt to go after the tween demo and compete with Monster High. (Which I’ve checked out… it’s a passable high school sitcom that becomes tiresome within minutes because it leans far too much on making super cheesy monster jokes.) If there’s any doubt about Hasbro’s intentions, just check the annual shareholder presentation from a few quarters back. “New brand expression,” whoopty do.
Personally I did not hate EqG as much as I expected to but I was wildly underwhelmed compared to you guys, even Neil, who I thought pegged many of the problems. Ugly character designs, crummy pacing, flat uninteresting story and resolution, hollow cheesy songs, multiple plot points that fall apart if you think about them for more than a half second. Brad – ahem, Flash Sentry – and Sunset Shimmer are paper thin plot props, consistent with most of McCarthy’s solo concepts. (Spike being written strongly, which I also liked, is another tic of hers, btw.) Anyway the bottom line is that the whole thing is a transparent, corporate mandated cash grab, often falling short of the show’s strong feminist messages in really disappointing ways, from the skirts on everybody – even the tomboys – to the anorexic bodies. It’s something that I can’t imagine Faust would have stood for.
Don’t get me wrong, the movie had a surprising number of funny self-aware bits, particularly as you said the fish out of water stuff in the first half, and the characters felt right, but ultimately it’s still well below the show’s standard. And it took up the franchise’s first movie and comic annual. At the end of the day, while it didn’t ruin the franchise for me or anything, I really hope we never hear from it again.
PS – I’m pretty sure Derpy is back for good now that the storm has blown over. After being completely absent from S3 she was all over the S3 finale, albeit in tiny easter egg appearances.
PPS – “Brad” is just pegging FS as an uber-generic tween love interest.
The “corndog” and Shining Armor comic actually sounds as though it’s referencing the fairly hilarious fan-subbed series “Friendship is Witchcraft”. The episode “Foaly Matripony” has Twilight in love with her brother (ala anime style) and upset about his marriage to Cadence. The series is unfortunately not great in the beginning, but the later episodes are actually quite good, and definitely have a sort of “anime fan-made” feel to them, with jokes like how Luna is a socially awkward fangirl. Anyway, here’s the website: http://sherclop.com/
Also, thanks for covering the movie! I’m in a Cosplay Crunch right now, preparing to make costumes for AWA this weekend, and figured it was a good time to catch up on your podcast. 😀
Nice to see Derpy is still out there in the background in this film. Don’t have the intentions of watching it simply because I haven’t saw past the first season of FiM anyway, but like hearing about it anyway as I have for the past few years.
This was probably your best GME on MLP.
For anyone that cares, the MLP comic annual answers most of the questions Paul, Kara, and Neil asked. Like were Sunset Shimmer and Twilight Sparkle students at the same time, why is Sunset Shimmer a crazy face? Things like that.