My Little Pony: The Movie is an animated feature film based on the My Little Pony toy line. It was released on June 20, 1986 by De Laurentiis Entertainment Group. The movie features the voices of Danny DeVito, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Rhea Perlman and Tony Randall.
Produced by Marvel Enterprises and Sunbow Productions, with animation production by Japan's Toei Animation and Korea's AKOM, My Little Pony: The Movie was succeeded by a television series which ran in late 1986. A 10-part episode from that series, The End of Flutter Valley, was a sequel to the movie.
Plot
At their home, Dreamcastle, the ponies are cantering through flowery meadows and grassy green fields with their animal friends including Spike, the baby dragon. A group of baby ponies are rehearsing their dance routine but one of them, named Lickity Split, wants to add her own moves to the performance, the others won't allow this and tell her to stick to the routine. Meanwhile, at the Volcano of Doom, a wicked witch named Hydia and her two daughters want to spoil the pony's fun.
The baby pony's dance begins, Lickity Split attempts to add her own dance and ruins the whole performance. She is told off by everyone and runs away, followed by Spike, only to end up falling down a waterfall and trapped in a valley. The two witch sisters try to ruin the pony's festival, but thanks to the Seaponies, end up getting washed away in an overflowing waterfall.
The little ponies send out a search party for Lickity Split and Spike, while the witch Hydia decides to make the Smooze, an unstoppable purple ooze that will eat and destroy everything in its path. Her daughters go and collect the ingredients for the Smooze, leaving out the flume, an ingredient that they are afraid of.
Hydia releases the Smooze which rages towards The My Little Pony Dreamcastle. All the ponies are forced to evacuate as the Dreamcastle and surrounding land is submerged by Smooze.
The search party rescues Lickity Split and Spike seconds before the Smooze eats them and the flying ponies travel to the human world to fetch their friends Megan, Danny and Molly, three children who have the Pony's magic Rainbow in their possession. Megan releases the Rainbow into the Smooze, it is swallowed up and lost but this does halt the Smooze.
Enraged, Hydia realises the Smooze was lacking flume and sends her daughters to get the missing ingredient from an octopus monster that lives on a rocky outcrop in the volcano, the monster almost strangles and kills them but they escape with some flume. Hydia adds it to the Smooze which is reactivated.
Megan, Molly and Danny accompany some of the ponies to visit a friendly wizard who gives the ponies a new home (Paradise Estate) and tells them to find the flutter ponies who will save the day. They set out to search for Flutter Valley and Megan gets lost in a field of giant sunflowers and is almost eaten by the Smooze, they travel through shadow forest and are attacked by a giant spider and Megan once again is almost killed, then climb out of the canyon and make it to Flutter Valley where they rescue a flutter pony who was trapped in a well. There is much argument about non-involvement in other ponies' problems from the flutter ponies. But the flutter pony who was rescued from the well convinces her fellow ponies to help her new friends defeat the Smooze.
The other ponies and forest animals are about to be eaten by the Smooze as the witches watch from their hot-air balloon. The flutter ponies come to the rescue and destroy the Smooze with their magic, uncover the rainbow and drop the witches into the sticky goo. With all the problems resolved, the ponies take the children back home.
Musical Numbers
- "My Little Pony Opening Chorus"
- "We're Witches" - Hydia
- "I'll Go It Alone" - Baby Lickety-Split, Spike
- "I'll Do the Dirty Work" - witch sisters
- "Nothing Can Stop The Smooze" - witches, Smooze
- "There's Always Another Rainbow" - Megan
- "Home" - The Wizard
- "What Good Could Wishing Do?" - Baby Lickety-Split, Morning Glory
- "My Little Pony Ending Chorus"
Reception
As with various other films of the 1980s designed to promote toy lines, My Little Pony was not well-received among critics. The New York Times' Nina Darnton, aware of its marketing purposes, added in her review:
| “ |
Unlike the great Disney classics [...], there is [...] nothing that will move [young audiences] - and there are very few bones of wit thrown to the poor parents who will have to sit through the film with children of this age group.[2] |
” |
The film's U.S. box office proved to be equally unsuccessful: opening in only 421 venues on June 6, 1986, it only managed to make nearly US$6 million in ticket sales.[1] With a US$674,724 gross on its wide debut,[1] it remains one of the weakest on record among major features.[3] The combined failure of this, and the next DEG/Hasbro collaboration, Transformers: The Movie, forced their producers to make G.I. Joe: The Movie into a direct-to-video release instead of theatrical. However, the Transformers movie was later reassessed and has become something of a cult classic, whilst My Little Pony has, to date, not.
My Little Pony premiered on DVD in late 2006, thanks to Rhino Entertainment. Musical moments from the film were used as its only extras.
Voice cast
References
- ^ a b c My Little Pony: The Movie at Box Office Mojo. Retrieved February 18, 2008.
- ^ Review of My Little Pony by Janet Maslin. The New York Times. Retrieved February 18, 2008. (Registration required to read.)
- ^ All-Time Worst Openings for 600+ Screens at Box Office Mojo. Retrieved February 18, 2008.
External links
