Well, here we go, the last My Little Pony-related product before we enter the final hiatus. The last few episodes of season nine have ranged from lackluster to downright awful, but can Rainbow Roadtrip pull off a Hail Mary at the eleventh hour?
My Little Pony: Rainbow Road Trip
Written by Kim Beyer-Johnson
Let's start off with some interesting trivia; it was intended to serve as a sequel to The Movie, but because of its poor box office numbers - which I don't understand considering that it made back almost ten times its budget ($6.5 million), but then again, My Little Pony has never been all things for all people - Rainbow Roadtrip was reworked to become an hour-long special for television.
But overall... it doesn't even feel at all like a special. It could've been a 22-minute episode and the result would've been exactly the same. Heck, the overall premise feels like something you'd expect to see from a run-of-the-mill, mid-season episode, not a feature length special.
The premise is basically the Mane Six being invited to Hope Hollow where Rainbow Dash is the guest of honor at the Rainbow Festival, only to discover that the entire town and the ponies living there have been drained of color. Once that's done, you're left wondering, "Okay, then what?" Well... very little.
It's basically The Cutie Map, except that episode had higher stakes and was sixteen minutes shorter. In fact, the story comes to an abrupt halt at that point and then it just drags on from point to point. But the stuff between the Mane Six's arrival and departure at the end just isn't interesting. Nothing feels tense or exciting. (Then again, this is My Little Pony in 2019, so what was I expecting?) Except maybe the scenes with Fluttershy, Pinkie, the married couple and their neighbor, though I could be saying this due to Fluttershy being my favorite.
The theme about helping others does work out, however, probably the best that Kim Beyer-Johnson's put out. It's especially relevant given that the world's a complete mess and hardly anyone's doing something about it. That's... all I can say, really.
But overall... it doesn't even feel at all like a special. It could've been a 22-minute episode and the result would've been exactly the same. Heck, the overall premise feels like something you'd expect to see from a run-of-the-mill, mid-season episode, not a feature length special.
The premise is basically the Mane Six being invited to Hope Hollow where Rainbow Dash is the guest of honor at the Rainbow Festival, only to discover that the entire town and the ponies living there have been drained of color. Once that's done, you're left wondering, "Okay, then what?" Well... very little.
It's basically The Cutie Map, except that episode had higher stakes and was sixteen minutes shorter. In fact, the story comes to an abrupt halt at that point and then it just drags on from point to point. But the stuff between the Mane Six's arrival and departure at the end just isn't interesting. Nothing feels tense or exciting. (Then again, this is My Little Pony in 2019, so what was I expecting?) Except maybe the scenes with Fluttershy, Pinkie, the married couple and their neighbor, though I could be saying this due to Fluttershy being my favorite.
The theme about helping others does work out, however, probably the best that Kim Beyer-Johnson's put out. It's especially relevant given that the world's a complete mess and hardly anyone's doing something about it. That's... all I can say, really.
Final Thoughts
This special didn't even feel like a special to begin with. It felt less like a sequel to The Movie and more like an extended episode. There's really nothing to gain or lose watching it. Ironically, it felt as colorless as Hope Hollow when the Mane Six first arrived there. Some will argue that the character moments were really good, and for the most part, they are, but there's only so far they can go without a story to prop them up within a one hour timeframe.
Rating: Bad (3/10)
Even though the movie (which in my opinion sucked big time as I felt it had terrible animation, just retreaded old ground like newer episodes, not much of a story, most characters were OOC, Tempest was just a hot mess, songs were forgettable) did make back its profit, it still didn't make as much money as other films that came out at the time like Blade Runner 2049, and even then and there, though that film came out in March, it got stomped by Power Rangers (2017) which also was a box office flop but it still made more money.
ReplyDeleteThe animation in my opinion here was ironically better than in the film (there it felt stiff with a low frame rate, terrible blending of 2D and CG to where the characters felt more like they were animation cels badly photographed into a PS2 game), but the story, nope, and it would have been way better had it been a Rainbow Brite special instead, as that's what I immediately think of when I hear of color needing to be spread to a world that's all drained of color. Why didn't Hasbro do something like that after their failed 3 episode reboot of that show? Even if this was a sequel to the MLP film, it wouldn't have been good, it feels more like one of those mostly crappy direct to video Disney sequels that lacked the magic of the previous films.
And alright, Fluttershy's my favorite too (along with Pinkie) <3