EqG Special: "Spring Breakdown"
30 Mar 2019My original rating: ★★
IMDb score: 6.7
The one with Applejack being seasick a lotThoughts: I can put it off no longer. Herewith a thankfully short rewatch review of possibly the most tedious piece of animation ever released in the G4 era. For a start, Ragamuffin. Yes, I know we eventually found out his accent was a put-on, but my how we suffered before then. A potentially fun story about a storm and a tropical island and Equestria became an utter chore. Basically nothing happened for the first half, beyond Rainbow Dash being annoying, and then only little things happened for the second half. Trixie was amusing, the parrot was fun, and er... The ending might have been interesting, but we now know that it never went anywhere. It avoids a one-star rating simply because "All Good" is a pretty solid song. A huge disappointment from Nick Confalone.
Choice quote: Fluttershy: Is the sea monster okay in the story?
New rating: ★★ (just)
Ah, thank Celestia that's over. Next up, it's back to Friendship is Magic and the very last season of the show. "The Beginning of the End, part 1" will be the first rewatch in that sub-series, and I hope it won't be almost two months until I get there this time!
Part of the problem for me is that this story suffers too much from self-trivializing, which is especially obvious because the adventurous worldbuilding works against that.
ReplyDeleteBy that, I don't just mean the baffling decision to have no better "villain" than a side effect of a movie villain who's already dead, which reflects about as well as making the main antagonist of "The Crystalling" be the weather. I mean stuff that should feel like a big deal, but which never really coalesces into a big deal.
There's another portal way out of the way of the original site, and yet not only does this not raise in-universe questions about the nature of the barrier between worlds, but it retroactively makes it harder to suspend our disbelief about the already-ripe issue of having any portal between worlds in the first place. Monsters like the "Friendship Games" carnivorous plant can come and go, but all the special does is patch one issue and ignore the source of the problem.
Characters feel weird too, and in ways that come across as random and inconsequential. Rainbow's hyped to find the next big threat (for... some reason, far from home, and only in this special), but by the time she's done making a self-discrediting fool of herself, she only stumbles upon the thing by happy accident. Sci-Twi's in some sort of "retirement", which barely feels committed before the inevitable tropes render it even more irrelevant than it already was. Applejack apparently called in sick and got forced to show up on set anyway, Pinkie's chasing a cake recipe which should mean nothing to a baker who can put the Mona Lisa in one already (and at a perfect angle to cut it), Fluttershy... exists, and the whole Ragamuffin thing makes Rarity look unsympathetically shallow (and dear God, Ragamuffin is a liability in this - he's like a Cockney parody of Applejack as done by someone who doesn't even know how to spell "Cockney", let alone get it, and beyond that he's just a dreadfully boring story doorstop).
More of the cast can now travel between dimensions, but they only do it a couple of times to solve relatively mundane issues and never make anything more out of the implications. Even the grand finale of the storm rescue is hobbled by the extended joke of cutting between the disaster and three dimension-hoppers having tea with a princess. It's like one damp squib after another.
There are occasional local upticks, such as the smaller moments with Sunset and Twilight, the inconveniently timed parrot, and Fluttershy fetching Pinkie some cake after the latter gets barred. Overall, though, this feels like the clearest example of Equestria Girls losing its way after the movies.
I really wasn't expecting a detailed comment from you about *this*, but it's very welcome nevertheless! And yes, "losing its way" feels pretty accurate here.
Delete"I really wasn't expecting a detailed comment from you about *this*, but it's very welcome nevertheless!"
DeleteBy and large, I don't really have a lot to say about the later seasons of FiM, but I still have str- I still have opinions about Equestria Girls.
With this one, I remember being cool on it the first time around, only to find it way more disappointing on a revisit (I mean, I wrote a whole blog post around it). Looking forward to "Sunset's Backstage Pass", though, if you plan on revisiting that one. That's the last great gasp for EqG, as far as I'm concerned, since it's one of the best examples (if not THE best example) of focusing on Sunset's relationship with a non-Twilight member of the ensemble.
And the holiday one... well, the Rainbow-getting-a-gift-for-Fluttershy one was ky-ute. So there's that to look forward to. :D
It has cute Derpy in it. That's about all I can say in its favor. I didn't actively dislike it. More that I just found in boring, but Dash was awful in this, and I've never liked the plot device of "person doing stupid things for stupid reasons accidentally being right."
ReplyDeleteRainbow was indeed immensely irritating. Nick Confalone had written her so much better in the past.
DeleteBecause of the second portal shenanigans, I have always WANTED to love this. But I cannot disagree with a word you've written here.
ReplyDeleteAt least Ragamuffin was fun to make fun of. :B Not that that was necessary.
I'm not sure I can even manage that. Dick Van Dyke is fun to make fun of, but actually nice with it. Ragamuffin... yeeeaaahhh...
DeleteIt gave us a tiny bit more time in Equestria, and that's all the good I can say about it.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to argue.
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