Horst_In_Translation Review of My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Spring Breakdown

My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Spring Breakdown (2019 TV Movie)

Milking the franchise

[4/10 · 12 July 2019]

"My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Spring Breakdown" is a pretty long title for a relatively short movie as this animated film we have here stays under the 45-minute mark, so by imdb standards it is considered a short film. I will spare you the names of the writer, directors and voice actors, but you probably came across some of these on previous projects. Now as you can see from the title already, this one is another installment to the really long-running My Little Pony franchise and at some point they decided to just turn the ponies into humans, who have the same hair like the ponies have manes, so it is a bit of an equivalent and this was enough of a success for new films about this being made in 2019 still. I wonder if it is accurate though. I personally would say no, but then again I also thought the older ones are not good and admittedly this one here is probably not considerably worse than those. There are some more dramatic moments included like a ship being flooded or a big thunderstorm, but it is of course all kept kids-friendly because this age group (especially females) are who they want to reach here and they probably did. Not too much wrong with the animation, even if the characters' looks did very little for me. The music, on the rare occasions when it was used, was rather cringeworthy. And not on a good level. The voice acting I am not a fan of. Even at this running time, the high squealing gets annoying pretty much, but maybe that is just my subjective taste. There are some characters here who are depicted as unlikable (outside the "ponies"), but it is never about good or evil really and even those like the female grumpy cook are supposed to also add a bit of cheekiness at least. Story telling could have been better too for sure. The concept of this franchise is as baffling to me as its success (imdb rating) and some of the other very bizarre reviews here on imdb. I personally give it a thumbs-down. Watch something else instead. And I love animation otherwise frequently, but this is really just for kids although you should genuinely ask yourself if this is the stuff you want your kids to see, especially the drooling by some characters over a male teenager.