My Little Pony Live! The World's Biggest Tea Party (2008) Online

I, like much of the internet, was swept into the pony vortex through the new series, Friendship is Magic, despite being outside the target demographic. To gain perspective, I and some other adult pony fans have been watching some of the old series. They are much worse than Friendship is Magic, but they are generally fun in a group viewing for the '80s cheesiness. Someone found a copy of this, and while we knew it was going to be a train wreck based on the cover along, we thought it would be funny.

It was not.

The costumes are a waking, surreal nightmare. There is only one person in each suit and they are in the front, so the hind legs float off the ground and flop around. The giant dead eyes give off the feeling of a thousand yard stare, and the manes and tails are just plastic streamers. I suppose walking 4 legged costume is a difficult technical achievement to overcome, but it is still deeply unsettling, especially since the actors frequently bend over so the hind legs are completely in the air. Flutterponies make a brief appearance, but they're small "puppets" glued on wooden sticks behind a makeshift wall. Clearly, Hasbro cared deeply about the production of this show, as you can tell also by the fact that the DVD is 4:3 instead of widescreen. The entire film's dialogue could not have taken more than an hour and a half to write. The best the writers could do for cleverness were some terrible puns: the rest is just singing about TEA and PARTIES with an occasional weak. That is it. There is no story at all beyond what is implied by the title, plus a somewhat bizarre moral tacked on at the end.

You can't go more than a minute or two without hitting another song, and to call the songs "bad" is an understatement: beyond the typical MLP songs, there are disco, rap, and gospel sections, which must have been deeply embarrassing for all parties involved. This includes the ponies singing "Shake your cutie" to the tune of the popular KC and the Sunshine Band song while shaking their dangling hindquarters. I have seen many nauseatingly disturbing fan creations on the internet for My Little Pony, but somehow that segment was the one that made me feel the most dirty and *ashamed*. Perhaps a young child would not notice the implications, but I feel like I deserve a prison sentence for watching it. Spike, with an inexplicable English accent, raps for a bit while wearing sunglasses. There are some singing ladybugs that simply won't go away. The finale song, without spoiling the ending, comes dangerously close to an official Hasbro shipping of Pinkie Pie and Minty.

There are many audience shots because some of the sections are very audience interactive, and there are a surprisingly high number of young boys present. But I truly feel for the adults in the room who paid a fair amount of money to sit through this agony. The one redeeming feature of the show is the genuine smiles of some of the mothers and fathers with their young children, not for the show, but because their child is having the time of her life. I have to confess that I do not think I would be such a good parent.

I could laugh this off as just another one of Hasbro's attempts to extract the most money possible out of parents with the least amount of effort, but some of the primary voice actors for Friendship is Magic also prominently feature in this, and now whenever I watch Friendship is Magic all I can see are the dancing costumes over the beautiful modern animation. The G4 ponies have been irrevocably tainted, and the costumes coming for me in my dreams.

This is not a movie that I think I will ever be able to forget, and for that I want to die.

Maybe the summary was a little too harsh, but I'll be honest in that I didn't care for The World's Biggest Tea Party. I liked the franchise as a kid, and as a young adult now I do like the original shows, specials and movies, have been pleasantly surprised by most of the recent direct-to-video efforts and Friendship Is Magic is one of the better animated shows in recent years. I liked the audience interaction, and it was clear that children were loving it, other than that I didn't see much point to The World's Biggest Tea Party. The costumes have a rather ugly and surrealistic look to them, if I'd seen those 15 years earlier I probably would have been freaked out, while the settings are artificial-looking and the lighting dull. The basic story is paper thin, with a very tacked-on moral at the end, the writing is corny, cloying and filled with cringe-worthy puns and the songs are both forgettable and uninspired, with the melodies lacking in whimsy, the lyrics inane and the singing forced and out-of-tune. The characters, that I usually do find engaging and likable if not entirely unique, are now annoying and the voice acting is often on the verge of being too cutesy. Overall, I don't scorn on My Little Pony, but I just didn't care for it. 2/10 Bethany Cox

Anyone that loves the G3 animated films will certainly enjoy the live show. The costumes are an accurate representation of each character in the animated movies and all the voices from those movies are incorporated here. Yes there's a lot of singing in the show but one has to remember this is aimed at kids and kids generally love songs. The animated eyes really bring the costume and the character to life, not to mention the lip movement. Additionally, there's not just a few characters but as many as 10 characters from the animated films as well as Spike. Some of the songs are completely original. Heck, for a new twist, they had the ladybugs song with actual ladybug characters instead of reenacting the original song with the ponies. It really shows that as a whole they worked really hard to keep the audience happy.