My Little Pony: The Movie (1986) - Is it any good outside of the target audience?

A long time ago I took a look at the My Little Pony movie from 2017, based on the 2010 series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I always intended to take a look at the original 1986 feature afterwards, and since it's May, I might as well take a look at it now. My Little Pony is one of those franchises that you feel mostly stayed relevant because of nostalgia, like the people who grew up watching this cartoon would go on to make their own version of it, like with Ninja Turtles or Transformers. It sometimes makes me question why some franchises get left behind? I'm thankful for Friendship is Magic on some level, but why can't we also get a cool reboot of Jem and the Holograms? We got a reboot of DuckTales, why not a reboot of House of Mouse? I may not be able to answer those questions now, because there are a lot of answers, but can I get some understanding from this movie? Probably not.

It is the first of Spring and the Ponies wish to celebrate, but three witches wish to spoil their fun by summoning the Smooze, and the ponies have to find a way to stop the Smooze after the rainbow of light gets swallowed up by them. Even though it was powerful enough to breakthrough the goo after literally being swallowed by them. Meanwhile, one of the ponies runs away after being scolded for a disastrous performance and gets stuck at the bottom of a cliff near a river, and now she must find her way back home with the help of weird goblin like creatures called the Grundles. Overall the plot is fine, though maybe a bit dragged out, there is a scene of the witches in this movie that is just given to "Hilarious slapstick antics", and too much of this movie is given to song numbers. Yes, this is another movie where they have too little spacing between the songs... Maybe I should look into why this happens sometime.

I think it's mostly a problem here because the songs aren't good. They aren't all sung badly, though some of them are, and one of them is just barely performed, but none of them are really memorable. On top of that the backing score is uninspired as well, I swear I heard the same title theme melody multiple times. The rest of it is forgettable, but does it's job. The same can be said for the animation, it is serviceable, it looks colourful and I noticed no real errors. It just looks like someone put the TV show onto the big screen. It worked in favour of Blue's Clues because that movie was A) Direct-to-Video, and B) based on a show that was stylized to the point that looking more theatrical would be less appealing. Imagine this movie with the animation quality of The Secret of NIMH or The Fox and the Hound, wouldn't that be something?

I feel like most of the animation's problems come down to the editing as well, some shots don't even last for a full second, and it was just too distracting. Speaking of distracting, yeah a movie based on a toy-line property is going to sell some toys. The minute I saw the "Paradise Estate" my first thought was "Only $29.99". I guess not everything became a toy, I can't find any evidence of the Grundles becoming a toy, nor the Smooze prior to G4. On top of that, I really can't hold this against this movie too much, it was kind of the big thing about cartoons back then.

Now we get to the characters. They were all mostly bland, the most character we got out of them was that some of them were pessimistic and worrisome while others weren't. Most of the characters were just insufferable to watch, with some minor exceptions. The villains weren't insufferable, just rather annoying, Cloris Leachman, Madeline Kahn and Rhea Perlman did fine enough performances, but put on rather grating voices, and they were expected to sing in those voices too. Charlie Adler also puts on a grating voice for Spike, and let's just say Cathy Weseluck's incarnation of the role could not come fast enough. Danny DeVito does a good performance though, so there's that. Here's something funny though, Charlie Adler, Russi Taylor, Tammy Armstrong, Sheryl Bernstein, Susan Blu, Nancy Cartwright and so many other talented voice actors playing the characters that everyone went to see this movie for, none of them got an opening credit. Reminds me of the 2017 movie, how they had all these celebrity names on the poster, but not one mention of any of the actors playing the main characters, the characters that we went to the movie to see. Give that awful Pinocchio movie credit, it at least put Tom Kenny's name on the box, neither of these theatrically released movies gave the same respect to the voice actors who voiced the lead roles, shameful.

I hate this movie. Yeah, I know it's made for little girls, but that does not excuse how insufferable of a drag this movie was. Nothing about it was entertaining, nothing about it was exciting, and I know some of you are going to bring up The Transformers: The Movie, which I also reviewed a long while ago. Here's the thing, I didn't really like that movie either, it was sloppy in a lot of places, but it at least had some well done action scenes to warrant watching even if only once, and if this movie had some well done music scenes, or even just a well done filler scene, something that made it worth checking out, I'd give it some credit. Whatever all the kids saw in this movie, and The Transformers movie too, I don't see it. Then again, these movies are way before my time and made for a different audience. Cartoons have changed a lot since the 80s, and it has been for the better and for the worse in a lot of places. Even cartoons aimed primarily at young girls have changed, and say what you want about Friendship is Magic or Littlest Pet Shop, but they have gotten a fanbase for a good reason, and that fanbase has grown beyond the target audience, and while that's lead to a smorgasbord of problems, trust me I've been through a bunch of them, it just goes to show the quality of them.

I'm putting this movie alongside Felix the Cat: The Movie, if it was strictly up to me, I'd give this movie an Avoid, I can't imagine this movie being someone's big inspiration to get into animation. But, I have to concede that I am not judging this strictly on my own opinions, but I am recommending them on multiple qualities. So while I found this movie boring and unwatchable, it's ultimately harmless, I can't imagine this movie really tanking the reputation of animation as a medium, and who knows, if you have a little girl, she might get some inspiration out of it. We got Friendship is Magic out of this franchise, so it had to be inspiring to some degree. Then again, you can just put on Friendship is Magic, and that would be so much better. So no, I don't recommend this movie on any level, show them G4 instead.

The Transformers: The Movie (1986) - An entertaining product of its time

In the 1970s, cartoons were heavily censored and not as profitable as they were now. To cut costs, Hannah-Barbera would recycle as much as they could to produce a show as cheaply as possible. This lead to a lot of bland and tasteless cartoons. This would change in the 1980s as television became deregulated, a move that both saved and ruined animation as we know it. Toy based cartoons were everywhere in the eighties, ranging from shows like G.I. Joe and My Little Pony to even the Rubik's Cube. One of the most popular of these shows was The Transformers, a cartoon about alien robots that can transform into other vehicles, machines or even animals. It was such a popular product that in the late eighties, The Transformers were given their own cinematic venture, simply known as The Transformers: The Movie.

After an attack on the Autobot City on Earth, leading to the death of Autobot leader Optimus Prime, the Decepticon leader Megatron gets summoned by a new threat to the Autobots, a massive planet-sized robot named Unicron. Now, the Autobots, scattered around other planets, and now lead by Ultra Magnus, must reunite and stop Unicron from destroying the Autobot moon base and destroying the matrix of leadership. The plot in this movie is a bit messy, there were times I could hardly tell what was going on. I got confused at how the Autobots became separated, and whether Megatron was turned into Galvatron or not, the movie didn't really make that part clear. The plot is not this movie's strongest aspect.

I think character wise you have a decent collection. I would not say the characters are highly complex, I would even say some of them are pretty bland. While not terribly memorable, none of the characters in this movie were really annoying. Hot Rod has a couple moments of character, but nothing really stands out. Even Unicron, the main threat of the movie, what makes him stand out is mostly his voice. Not a whole lot about these characters stands out in many ways.

While I'm on the subject, the cast in this movie is excellent. Peter Cullen and Frank Welker do the excellent performances they're known for, Scatman Crothers returns for his final role as Jazz, and he does a fine job as well. Leonard Nimoy was unrecognizable as Galvatron, Judd Nelson did a good job as Hot Rod, Eric Idle was perfectly cast as Wreck-Gar, John Moschitta, Jr. did a fine job as Blurr, and Orson Welles did an excellent and menacing performance in his final role as Unicron. Cast wise, the movie has an excellent cast, though I do wish we got more of the original cast as well. It's hard to really say that cast members like Casey Kasem or Chris Latta (Cliffjumper and Starscream respectively) were in this movie because their roles were so minimal. Other than that, the cast did a fine job.

When it comes to the animation, this movie has it's peaks and valleys. On the one hand, it is a very detailed film, you can see all kinds of bits and parts and debris. Sometimes however, some scenes can be too detailed, which is only a problem in less than a handful of scenes, to be fair, but is still something I noticed. There is also a fair amount of bright flashing lights, so anyone that has problems with flashing lights would be wise to take precautions if you decide to view this movie. Aside from that, I noticed no animation flubs or any other major problems with the animation.

But let's be honest here, what really made this movie worth watching was the action scenes, and this movie has an abundance of them. All of them were really entertaining, and well done. A lot of the soundtrack matched perfectly with the action as well, and you see a fair amount of the carnage. Megatron stabs Optimus Prime with a chunk of rubble and you see not just it happen, but Optimus pulling it out and the damage it causes. You see characters get executed, an Insecticon's head get run over, a lot of this action is brutal, and I would recommend an adult be present if children are going to see this movie.

I think my only complain with the action is the odd choice of having a soft rock power ballad play during some of the fight scenes. It wasn't a terrible song, but it felt out of place hearing an 80s power ballad while being shown Megatron shooting Optimus Prime to death. It's a bit of a confusing decision is what I'm saying.

Overall, The Transformers: The Movie is one of the biggest products of it's time I've ever seen. Simple and messy plot, bland characters, soft rock power ballad and some fairly good, but still recognizable 80s art and animation. That being said, the action scenes were really what made this movie entertaining, it's a sickening and bloody sight that will entertain the young child that enjoyed blowing up spaceships in their backyard. It's a movie you have to have fond memories of to really love it, but as a newcomer, I was entertained by what I was given. I'm not sure if this movie is better than the Michael Bay live-action movie, the first one, but as a whole, I found it entertaining. If you have an hour and a half to kill and want to see some entertaining action scenes, there are worse ways to spend your time.