A Non-Brony Take On Equestria Girls

Allow me to be straightforward.  I attended a brony meetup to watch My Little Ponies:  Equestria Girls.  As a non-brony, I have no emotional connection with the MLP franchise.  I'm familiar enough with the source material (Generation 4), but I'll leave all the heavy lifting to all the fans of the television show.  That said, I'll try to give as concise a summary and review as possible.  Plus, I showed up about five minutes late to the screening, but with experience with other films in this genre, plus bearing familiarity in the G4 series, I can at least imagine what went wrong.

Basic summary:  Twilight Sparkle, fresh off become an alicorn princess after learning the magic of friendship, begins ready to resume her royal duty as Alicorn Princess Twilight Sparkle.  Princess Celestia's former student Sunset Shimmer, in a fit of jealousy, sees fit to steal Twilight's element of harmony.  In trying to recover the crown, both Sunset and the crown fall through the looking glass (a la Alice In Wonderland), through which Twilight and Spike have to go through to recover it and defeat Sunset.  Once on the other side, Twilight becomes a teenaged girl, and Spike becomes her little dog, too.  (How Wizard of Oz.)

Twilight Sparkle finds herself in a place more dangerous and mysterious than anything she could have anticipated:  High school.  It is here in the real world (or human world, if it matters) that she finds that she truly is a fish out of water.  Unable to be honest and forthcoming about the truth lest everyone consider her to be cuckoo, she has to think fast in order to try and fit it.  Twilight's biggest challenges are in trying to recover the element of harmony, trying to reunite the human versions of her friends, and coming back through the portal she went through to return to Ponyville.

In the human world, Twilight's friends have human counterparts.  To be honest, the reason her friends' human counterparts had stopped being friends was kind of predictable:  Sunset Shimmer.  But they didn't know that, and could've have been resolved easily had they just confronted each other to try and resolve things.  Which happens only at Twilight's insistence.  That said, they come together to help help Twilight (you guessed it) become princess of the formal.  It's a running theme of the series, so why ruin a good thing, right?

Sunset tries to sabotage those plans, they keep pressing forward, and in the end Twilight is elected princess and is able to retrieve the crown.  Sunset, not content to concede defeat, challenges her to a boss battle, becoming a demon-teenager as the mane six discover the human magic of friendship (her god mode carrying over to this world) to defeat Sunset so that Twilight can recover the element and return home with Spike.  Sunset remains human and stays behind in the human world, with Twilight asking her human friends to help Sunset by becoming friends with her.

Now, for the nit-picky gritty opinion everybody wants to read.  A lot of the humor and references in this movie come straight from the show.  Meaning that it would be necessary to at least be familiar with the series before watching this movie.  This movie is also marketed for little girls.  Of course, given that the series produced such that a wide demographic that its audience isn't just little girls, but also grown adults, I wasn't surprised to find that the theater I attended was in the area of 90% adults, 10% parents with children.  Sitting in the back (due to being late), I did notice one parent with a child in the stroller get up from the middle of the theater and just go to the back to enjoy the film from there.  He really did seem uncomfortable having to watch a cartoon for children while sharing the experience with a lot of grown adults, mostly men.

Of course, I was uncomfortable while taking my nephew to a kid's film once.  But that was only because I had to take him to see the film Kangaroo Jack.  I was so ashamed of having watched that movie that I didn't even demand my money back.  That would have required I actually admit to having watched that movie to begin with, so I just hung my head in shame (sans cone) and just take my nephew home.

Now, my opinion on My Little Ponies:  Equestria Girls is this.  While it's not one of the greatest films I've seen ever (such as Terminator 2 and Invaders from Mars), it's nowhere near terrible, nor was it a terrible waste of a Sunday morning.  I've seen terrible films before.  Films like Hop, Austin Powers:  Goldmember, Terminator 3, Terminator 4, the Star Wars prequels, Hancock, you get the point.  MLP:EG is more the sort of film that, by contrast to its cinematic predecessors, is actually quite a decent enough film to watch.  Either alone, with friends, or (dare I say) with one's own children.  It's pretty much a decent enough film at 70 minutes to be enjoyable, despite having some moments in there that could have used a bit of refining.  Perhaps, if I had a copy of the film, I might be enticed to do a bit of MST3K-style commentary for it some time in the future.

If you're a fan of the series, then it's definitely worth buying, since you probably will enjoy it based on being a fan of the show.  If you have doubts, and don't want to go out and see it, there's always Netflix, or watching with someone who's a fan who will eventually own it.

That's it for now.  I'll have to see what the next film will be in my line up.  Peace out, and see you later.