My Little Pony: The Movie (1986) | |
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"Nothing can stop the Smooze." - The truth | |
Riffed by | Ronin Fox Trax |
Riffers | James Cruise "Ronin Fox", Erica Cruise "Luna Tic-Toc" |
Series | |
Date Released | April 2015 |
My Little Pony: The Movie is a 1986 American animated musical fantasy film based on the My Little Pony toy line by Hasbro starring the voices of Danny DeVito, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Rhea Perlman and Tony Randall. The film was produced by Marvel Productions and Sunbow Productions using animation from Toei and AKOM. The film was released theatrically by De Laurentis Entertainment Group. The plot concerns a collection of magical talking ponies and their human friends fending off the magical attack of a trio of witches who unleash a living sludge to ruin Dream Valley.
It is the first theatrical depiction of the My Little Pony brand, though it acts as a sequel to the television specials: My Little Pony (Later named Rescue at Midnight Castle) in 1984 and My Little Pony: Escape from Catrina in 1985. It was later followed up by the series My Little Pony ‘n Friends, which featured segments based on the pony characters along with segments of other Hasbro properties like Glo Friends and Potato Head Kids.
This incarnation of My Little Pony is not canonically related to the current highly popular My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic series, though the new series occasional borrows imagery and characters, like the Baby Dragon Spike, from this and other past incarnations of the brand.
The film underperformed at the box office, remaining one of the worst recorded openings of wide released movies (taking in $674,724 from 421 venues in its opening weekend). The failure of the film drastically changed the plans of several Hasbro projects, including the cancellation of a Jem and the Holograms animated film and the scrapping of the theatrical release of G.I. Joe the Movie in favor of a direct-to-video launch.
Ronin Fox Trax released thier riff of the film for April 17, 2015 on thier Gumroad Store. The track will be released on iRiffs when possible. Starting on April 11, 2015 Ronin Fox Trax began releasing videos of riffed Vintage My Little Pony Commercials as a tie in to the movie riff.
Synopsis and Preview[]
[Spoilers Begin]
Spring is spreading across the valley and the woodland animals are waking up as the snows melt. Among them are ponies who leave their Dream Castle who wake up to prepare for a Spring festival. As part of the festivities, baby pony Lickety-Split rehearses for a dance recital with her friend Spike the Dragon accompanying her on the piano. She’s acting like a total diva.
Close by the Dream Castle municipal area on the edge of Dream Valley County is the Volcano of Gloom. Inside this volcano is the home of a witch named Hydia and her two daughters Reeka and Draggle. They apparently have nothing better to do than look down at the ponies and get ticked off, as if they’re following the Pre-Christmas Grinch life-plan. Hydia sends her daughters to ruin the festival.
The dance recital begins in front of a packed audience of ponies and other animals, featuring several of the baby ponies. Lickety-Split shows up in a flashy attention-grab outfit and starts dancing like an idiot, knocking other ponies over. The other ponies involved with the performance all gang up on Lickety-Split and yell at her for ruining the show until she starts crying and runs away to the pony nursery. Spike runs after her as she packs up some stuff and runs away from home.
The witch sisters arrive and try and use a magic spell to flood the festival, but the flow of water from a nearby stream is redirected by some arm-less and leg-less Sea-Ponies to wash the sisters away at the feet of the other ponies. Despite being face to face with evil that wishes to harm them, the ponies only call the witches cute until they leave.
Several ponies realize that Lickety-Split is missing and they form up a search party. At the same time Hydia, disappointed in her daughters’ failure, decides to create something called the Smooze. She sends her daughters out to gather a list of disgusting ingredients, which they do, though they leave out an important one called Floom, as they are both afraid to get it. Even without the Floom, Hydia is able to create the Smooze, which grows from the lava of the volcano, turning into a living semi-sentient purple ooze that begins to spread out from the mountains and across the valley. The ponies in Dream Castle and its surrounding structures realize they are in danger and try and prepare for the coming disaster. Their efforts are futile though, as the Smooze simply flows over and engulfs everything in its path.
The search party continues unsuccessfully as Lickety-Split and Spike had fallen down a cliff near a noisy waterfall and none of the ponies bother looking down. Along the way, they enlist help from the Bushwoolies, tiny furry blobs of something that talk like excitable morons, mostly repeating and agreeing with things. The Smooze arrives and engulfs the search party while forcing Lickety-Split and Spike into an underground cave. Ponies and Bushwoolies are stained by the Smooze, and because of its influence start acting angry and bitter.
Two pegasi, Wind Wistler and North Star, fly to the human world to find Megan, a young girl who holds a locket containing the mythical Rainbow of Light. Megan introduces the pegasi to her younger brother and sister, Danny and Molly. All of them travel back to the site of Dream Castle where they release the Rainbow of Light. The Rainbow is able to stop the flow of the Smooze, but not destroy it, and in the process the Rainbow itself is swallowed up and lost.
Angered at the Smooze being stopped, Hydia interrogates her daughters to discover that the Floom was left out of the formula. She orders them to fix this and retrieve the Floom, which they do by attacking a monster plant on a nearby mountain and draining some goop from it while it beats them.
Megan and some ponies visit a small gnome-like man called The Moochick for advice on getting a new home to replace Dream Castle and finding a defense against the Smooze since the Rainbow of Light has been lost. Moochick and his silent rabbit sidekick eventually produce a new large house called Paradise Estate to give to the ponies and a map to Flutter Valley with the promise that the Flutter Ponies might have the magic to defeat the Smooze. Moochick warns that the Flutter Ponies don’t like to be disturbed.
Lickety-Split and Spike travel through underground caves and discover a small band of troll-like beings called Grundles. The Grundles tell their sad story, revealing that they once had their own kingdom of Grundleland that was destroyed long before by the witches and Smooze. The Grundles agree to help Lickety-Split and Spike find their way back home, even after finding a way out of the caves to discover that the Smooze had returned.
Hydia adds the Floom to the Smooze, which reactivates and starts spreading again.
Megan and her siblings group up with some ponies in a fellowship to find Flutter Valley but get caught in a field of giant sunflowers as the Smooze attacks. They narrowly escape through Shadow Forest and face a giant spider.
Lickety-Split and Spike along with the Grundles find a well and discover that a Flutter Pony named Morning Glory had fallen into it and couldn’t fly out. They rescue her and she agrees to help them.
Megan and her fellowship eventually find Flutter Valley and ask the queen, Rosedust, for help. She refuses to get involved at first, but Lickety-Split and company arrive and Morning Glory implores the queen to act. After a bit of pony parliamentary procedure everyone agrees to go back to face the Smooze.
Just when the Smooze seemed about to engulf everyone the Flutter Ponies perform their magic, which consists of flapping their butterfly-ish wings very fast, which blows away and somehow destroys the Smooze while also forcing the witches back to their volcano. The flappy magic even blows away the stains on the Ponies and Bushwoolies, returning them to normal. They try and fix the Grundles too, only to discover that the Grundles are naturally ugly, and I guess that’s okay. To avoid some awkwardness, the ponies agree to give Dream Castle to the Grundles.
[Spoilers End]
Cast and Crew[]
- Danny DeVito as Grundle King
- Rhea Perlman as Reeka
- Madeline Kahn as Draggle
- Cloris Leachman as Hydia
- Tony Randall as Moochick
- Charlie Adler as Spike and Woodland Creature
- Russi Taylor as Morning Glory, Rosedust, Skunk, Bushwoolie
- Tammy Amerson as Megan
- Jon Bauman as The Smooze
- Michael Bell as Grundle
- Sheryl Bernstein as Buttons, Woodland Creature, and Bushwoolie
- Susan Blu as Lofty, Grundle, and Bushwoolie
- Nancy Cartwright as Gusty and Bushwoolie #4
- Cathy Cavadini as North Star
- Peter Cullen as Grundle and Ahgg
- Laura Dean as Sundance and Bushwoolie #2
- Ellen Gerstell as Magic Star
- Keri Houlihan as Molly
- Katie Leigh as Fizzy and Baby Sundance
- Scott Menville as Danny
- Laurel Page as Sweet Stuff
- Sarah Partridge as Wind Whistler
- Alice Playten as Baby Lickety-Split and Bushwoolie #1
- Jill Wayne as Shady and Baby Lofty
- Frank Welker as Bushwoolie #3 and Grundle
Quotes[]
- "Captain Crunch is a dead man!" - Ronin Fox as Smooze
Notes[]
- Erica Cruise, refferred to as "Vamperica" in all previous riffs changed her riffing name to "Luna Tic-Toc" in the introduction.