My Little Pony: A New Generation Review
For over thirty five years, Hasbro’s beloved colourful and magical My Little Pony figurines have become one of company’s biggest brands on toy shelves around the world. And with the fourth series, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, being a big success with nine seasons, spin-off shows, a theatrically released film and a wide range of merchandise produced, they have been more popular than ever before.
The latest interpretation of the franchise may have some tough hurdles to jump over though after the popularity of its predecessor, but can My Little Pony: A New Generation take off with grace as the fifth generation and as a standalone film?
My Little Pony: A New Generation
Set in the same world and years after the events of the Friendship is Magic series, A New Generation opens up on Maretime Bay where Sunny Starscout (voiced by Vanessa Hudgens) wants to reunite the Earth ponies, unicorns and pegasus’ despite everyone else in the town fearing them and their supposed dangerous magical abilities. But a unicorn named Izzy Moonbow (Kimiko Genn) trots into their town and quickly befriends Sunny and learn that there is no magic among them. They set of for an adventure across Equestria to discover the secrets of the disappearance of magic and make new friends with the pegasus siblings Zipp Storm (Liza Koshy) and Pipp Petals (Sofia Carson) while being pursued by the sheriff stallion Hitch Trailblazer (James Marsden).
Despite the ninety minute running time, the plot tries to pack in too many characters and does unfortunately impact the story’s simple premise. Friendships and the development for some of the characters just suddenly get resolved. It does impact the initial enjoyment I had with the film and it did feel like most of the characters were in it to eventually spawn a television series and create new merchandising opportunities.
My Little Pony: A New Generation – (L-R) IZZY (voiced by Kimiko Glenn), HITCH (voiced by James Marsden), PIPP (voiced by Sofia Carson), SUNNY (voiced by Vanessa Hudgens) and ZIPP (voiced by Liza Koshy). Cr: © 2021 Hasbro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The animation though is really well made and the character designs are nicely done despite my issues with the plot and characters themselves.
As the first computer animated film produced by Irish animation studio Boulder Media, they were able to build a colourful and surprisingly modern take on what fans of the series might not be expecting. From the gold and marble city skylines of where the pegasus’ reside to the gorgeously old fashioned lighthouse home of Sunny overlooking Maretime Bay, there’s a lot of good details that makes the film very pleasing to the eyes. This was really well done considering that the studio’s previous work involved traditional animated shows like Wander Over Yonder and the Danger Mouse remake as well as spin off titles from the Friendship is Magic series.
The character designs though do work well in the three dimensional space and were equally given the same amount of care when it comes to the details and the look they were given. Each character has been given enough care to make them look unique from one another and the animators did a good job at using the performances of the cast to make them really expressive.
My Little Pony: A New Generation – (Center L-R) IZZY (voiced by Kimiko Glenn) and SUNNY (voiced by Vanessa Hudgens). Cr: © 2021 Hasbro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
While the film is surprisingly pleasing to the eyes and children will no doubt enjoy it, there were just too many characters to fit into a ninety minute film and this did impact the quality of the story as well. Young fans of the previous shows might enjoy what this new generation of characters has to offer, but it didn’t quite cross the finishing line as someone who is not the biggest fan of My Little Pony.
My Little Pony: A New Generation is now availbale on Netflix UK.