Dotbankey A lot of fun.

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Ortiz Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

WeirdRaptor Hello, ladies and gentlemen, WeirdRaptor here. This is the very first animated incarnation of My Little Pony. It was set in a fantasy world called, Ponyland, or Dream Valley (no two writers could decide whether the former was a part of the latter, or if the latter was a part of the former). Anyway, wherever it is, all the stories are placed within it…somewhere. The basic framing composition of the series was always the same, but it worked.It went something like this: Magical sapient ponies live idyllic lives in their home, first Dream Castle and later Paradise Estate, and frequently go on adventures to save the latest victimized one shot character from the latest villain. The nature of these adventures (oddly) usually involved the villain having ambitions to either destroy Ponyland/Dream Valley, or change it so fundamentally as to render it desolate for everyone else. They were often helped by a mushroom-themed gnome named the Moochic and his beleaguered assistant, Habit. A handful of episodes focus not on averting the latest Apocalypse, but on more mundane matters, such as using your imagination for fun, scavenger hunts, taking care of stray animals in need, dealing with bullies, and mending political ties following the catastrophic Ice Cream War II (Hey, don't look at me that way! A friend of mine lost both his legs in that war!).There were 65 episodes in all. 16 were multi-part serials, most of which were either 2-4 parts long with one Ten Episode Pilot. There were only 9 standalone episodes.Some technical aspects of the series: its continuity tended to be "lax-to-non-existent. The animation was cheap, animation errors were in abundance, the characters' faces would sometimes just look weird because of this, but it was good enough to get its job done. There were some inspired moments in design that led to creative settings, backgrounds, and character designs.The writing was uneven, ranging from decent to serviceable to "Criminey, somebody actually wrote that and they actually got an actor to say it".The voice acting was on par with the rest of the show. Some of the voice actors really knew what to do with their characters, while others just sounded awful. The Baby Ponies in particular were a big offender on having annoying voices, what with adult actresses trying way to hard to sound cutesy and young. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic does young pony voices right, by casting actual kids. Oddly, the human children featured in the series were voiced by actual kids, but the Baby Ponies weren't. Figure out that logic behind that one.In all, when the show was at its best, it was a solid, fun watch. And when it was bad, you had Miss Piggy wannabes and their Dog-Bird…things from Jersey, attempting villainy, by GASP! cutting ponies' hair! Yeah…this show could get out there sometimes. Did I mention Miss Piggy Wannabe's powers were to turn things to glass, and her Achilles Heel was the destruction of her cape? In all, it was a decent show and a fun one. If you like My Little Pony and you're not too turned off by the overly sugary look of the show, I'd recommend it.Parental Warning: The overt strangeness and sometimes, frightening, nature of the villains and the effect they have on the ponies and their environment has been known to be a rife source of nightmare fuel for some of the wee ones. If you're hoping for something along the lines of G3, this is not for you.Objective Vote: 6/10. Subjective Vote: 7.5/10.

boyinflares OK, so i am now 21, but My Little Pony has just been released on DVD in New Zealand, and as it was my favourite cartoon from when i was a kid, i had to get it on DVD to relive the adventures of the ponies and their friends. But my adult mind sees several things wrong with this animated series.So, the good and bad parts about this animated series: The ponies themselves are too cool. North Star, Whizzer, Paradise, Magic Star, Gingerbread, Masquerade and Ribbon were my favourite, but nearly all of them were good. They all had varying degrees of characteristics, some of the ponies were well developed, for example, Wind Whistler was always incredibly wise and remained calm at all times, a sort of leader for the group. Gusty was brash, brave and impatient. Fizzy was fun, excitable and a friend to everyone, while Hearthtrob was a true romantic. However, some ponies, while cool, were not that well developed in terms of depth. North Star mainly stood around looking posh. Whizzer unfortunately never got any main stories, except for being faster than everyone else - in flight and speech. Cupcake, well, Cupcake just got to bake.One thing that was a let down was the amount of guest-characters that were "needed" to drive the story, which in my opinion just got in the way. Like the Grundles and Moochick who were just annoying, and one-off characters that the ponies meet on their adventures, like Puck. The human characters Meggan, Danny and Molly were pretty cool though, as was Spike the Dragon and the Bushwoolies. Various other ponies took up time too - like the decent Flutter ponies, the boring baby-ponies, the pointless Sea-ponies, the Big Brother ponies and the one-off Princess Ponies. I think more time should have been spent on the development of the ponies and less on the various guest stars. The villains though were fairly decent, like Grogar and Somnambula.The animation was fairly poor. Plenty of mistakes occurred in terms of characters speaking but no open mouths, or the words coming from the wrong character. Also, the wrong ponies being shown at various moments plagued the series, for example if four ponies went on a mission, at one point a different pony would have been drawn in place of one of the correct ones. But there were plenty of bright colours and illustrative settings.Continuity was terrible, in "Return of Tambelon" especially, the group of ponies who were not captured changed from episode to episode, a tragedy for what i believe the best episodes from this series.The voices were great, particularly famous voice-actor Susan Blu as Paradise, Catherine Cavadini as North Star, Sarah Partrdige as Wind Whistler and Ellen Gerstell as Magic Star, Whizzer and Masquarade... at least i think she did all three, no where can i find a complete list of which ponies were voiced by who. Of course it is a well known fact that the famous Nancy Cartwright (Bart from "The Simpsons") played Gusty.Some of the best episodes were those that allowed for more story, like the 10 part "End of Flutter Valley", 4 part "Return of Tambelon", 4 part "Magic Coins" and 4 part "Ghost of Paradise Estate". These longer stories allowed more screen time for various ponies, and were more fun to watch as opposed to singular or 2 part episodes. It would have been heaps better to have longer stories, but the show was shared with another 10 minute cartoon ("Glo Friends", "Moondreamers" or "Potato Head Kids").Overall, this animated series is a fun watch, it has a great cast, fun characters, exciting settings and plenty of good stories with fun songs and has good morals, but is plagued with inconsistencies, errors, and goofs. A new series would be cool, but with the same actors and ponies, only having longer stories with more development in the characters. But then again, this series was aimed at kids, so maybe now i expect too much! 7.5 out of 10

Nicholai I was vaguely aware of this show back when it was airing during the mid to late eighties, and I remember watching some episodes and being charmed by them, even though I was too young to remember those episodes in any detail. So I decided recently to rent an episode of MLP because I thought it would be a delightful trip back to memory lane.All right, perhaps I'm not being fair. Perhaps this episode, "The Glass Princess" was not really a representative episode of what is supposed to be a popular and thoughtful children show. But then again, if this is what they consider an episode worthy of distributing in commercial VHS, then we might have ourselves a problem.I can honestly say the opening and closing sequences were the best parts of this 35 minute treac-a-thon. The music was upbeat and wistful at the same time, which would beckon kids from whatever activity they may be engaged in at the time and embrace them for the fanciful adventures that will be sure to follow. The closing sequence stripped down to the many flutes provided the proper denouement of a mythical adventure that recalls the dance of the satyrs.But instead of a carefully considered bit of storytelling, we are subjected to a continuous traffic accident of plot holes barely small enough to cover with an infield tarp, disconnected plotlines that were haphazardly stitched together, carbon-copy characters I could care less about and (worse of all) VERY superfluous songs which were lazily written.For specific examples, the ponies were preparing for a Pony Olympics at the beginning of the episodes, yet less than five minutes in you wouldn't even know there was a huge event being planned. The main-character pony, Shady, gets into a song about how useless she is, only to be sung back into comfort by one of her human friends - an exercise that could have been easily resolved by a few well crafted dialogue. In this episode, Gusty the magic unicorn and Heartthrob the pegasus were kidnapped along with Lickety-Split the "earth pony" and kept in bondage - even though magic unicorns can *magically* teleport wherever they want and pegasuses can fly away under their own volition as welland were give several opportunities to do so as well. And the show just generally suffers from the fact that it has too much characters and too little time to distinguish between them and make them compelling and interesting enough.What is really inexcusable, however, is the slipshod animation it serves us. This has got to be the one of the cheapest, most weakest production of a cartoon series this side of juvenile anime. Missing cells translate into jerky and stuttered movement of every character. Continuity of form is thrown out the window. And lip sync? They might as well be dubbing over an Estonian film for the type of attention they've paid to it. Oh well, at least the cartoon has a lot of color that will stimulate the mind of the youngest audience.All this seems to indicate that the producers of this cartoon only intended to make this a vehicle to which to sell their many toys and pony dolls, which were virtually ubiquitous during that era. Any new and useless character introduced will usher in a new doll and the cycle will repeat itself at the bidding of the toy companies. This is not the 12-year-old boy repelled by anything that would appeal to girls, I showed this tape to two of my younger sisters, and they were appropriately repulsed by it. It's a shame I have to do this, but this saccharine piece of popular watered-down pablum deserves only one star. I was expecting a LOT more.* out of ****

Lady Jasmine Charming, gentle, and in a strange way educational...that's MLP...there will never be another cartoon quite like it. I was devastated the day I found they had removed the old MLP movies from the rental shelves and replaced them with some badly translated anime movies. I felt like a stage in my life was just gone...I hope my that one day my own kids can appreciate this series for the unique show it was.