My Little Pony: A New Generation

The world of the ponies has split in three: unicorns, pegasi and earth ponies live apart and fear each other. Magic is gone. Sunny, a young pony, believes the three groups once lived together and sets out with a unicorn to prove it. The film is not interested in adventure. It is interested in fear being taught: every group here grew up on invented stories about the others and nobody has ever met the other side. For a children's film it is an unexpectedly direct account of segregation. The form is fully computer animated: the series used three-dimensional production for the first time, leaving behind the two-dimensional line of the earlier television show. The palette and character design were rebuilt for a new generation. José Luis Ucha directed. It was released on Netflix and began the franchise's post-television era; a series followed. Vanessa Hudgens voices Sunny and Kimiko Glenn the unicorn Izzy. Who it is for: families looking for animation and children following the franchise. Who it is not for: anyone attached to the old series. The characters are entirely new, the story runs on familiar patterns and the songs are ordinary.