The Guardian's Stuart Heritage blogs about the EqG trailer

Construction Paper - Lyra Facehoof by MusicalWolfe, Dec 2012. CC by-nc-nd 3.0

Yes, folks: we really have been reduced to this in order to get some actual UK-centric coverage for MLP on this blog. The Guardian's intermittently amusing film/TV/music writer Stuart Heritage has written about Equestria Girls. Not the actual film, mark you: nobody in Britain has (officially, at least) seen that yet. Instead, the movie's release has been marked by Heritage with a blog post about the (second) trailer. And remember, this guy is a professional: he's getting paid for doing this. So it had better be good. Is it?

We-ell... I think "intermittently amusing" would also be a good description of his writing here. Nothing Heritage says is going to come as a shock to those of us who've seen the trailer, and I'll grant that some of his comments are actually quite funny. My favourite is his description of the interdimensional wormhole opened up by the magic mirror: "like a million children have vomited Haribo into a branch of Claire's Accessories, but with more weird photobombing pig things". Others, such as Sunset Shimmer's jaundiced look, are run-of-the-mill.

And does Heritage mention the fandom? Oh yes. Well, sort of. Like almost every other journalist in Britain (unlike, I have to say, some of our American cousins) he either hasn't done much research on the fandom's lack of noticeable screaming demand for EqG, or he has but doesn't care. As it's a humorous blog, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt there. And then take it away again for his exceptionally feeble and unfunny comment about how we "adult male brony fetishists" will love the scene with Twilight on her knees and Spike on her back. Sigh.

As I type this, the comments section beneath Heritage's piece is a mixed bag, with some Pony fans, some outsiders and some who think the whole thing is completely incomprehensible. I can live with that: I'd just prefer not to have The Guardian, of all papers, thinking it's fine and dandy for commenters to openly compare bronies with the likes of Jimmy Savile, as happened below the line of Rebecca Angel's article in the same newspaper last October. As for Heritage's own piece? Not all that offensive, but not all that funny either. Shrug.