A Very Minty Christmas

Dec 2, 2009

Categories: Christmas Reviews, Featured, Movie Reviews

Written By: Eric Jensen

Rating:
You know those times when you hear about a movie or a show and think to yourself “Man, I can’t friggin’ wait to watch that?” And then time goes by, maybe even a few years, and you don’t ever see the thing, but at last you do and you’re just thrilled?

But then you finally see it and basically it sucks?

That’s the exact situation with me and this My Little Pony cartoon called A Very Minty Christmas.

It tells the story of Christmastime in Ponyville. The trees are being decorated, gifts are being wrapped, goodies are being baked. Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash and Thistle Whistle (seriously) are all fixin’ to have one rip-roarin’ Yule, especially after completing the biggest annual Ponyville tradition: the creation of the Here Comes Christmas Candy Cane.

The Here Comes Christmas Candy Cane is, well, a big candy cane. It goes on the top of the tallest Christmas tree in Ponyville where it gives off an eerie/festive glow. This glow acts as a beacon for the Christmas Big Man himself, Santa Claus, so he’ll know where to stop to deliver all the pony presents.

But then along comes Minty. Minty’s a green pony (duh), she’s the only pony in town who wears socks (and she loves them), and she’s notoriously clumsy. So clumsy is she that, while flying around in a hot air balloon—and the ponies fly around in hot air balloons a lot in this cartoon—she accidentally knocks the Here Comes Christmas Candy Cane right to the ground, smashing it into a bunch of “crackly little pieces.”

Uh oh, Christmas is ruined! Without the glow from the Here Comes Christmas Candy Cane (and every time the ponies talk about it, they use its full unwieldy mouthful of a title), Santa won’t know to come to their village, as Santa is well known to only stop at your house if you’re shining a big spotlight into the sky.

Minty better think of something to do and fast!Naturally, she decides that in Santa’s absence she’d better deliver the presents herself. All she really has are socks, but she loves them, so she sneaks about leaving one for every pony in town. After all, as Minty says in a song, “Nothing says Christmas like a pair of socks.”

Eventually the other ponies find out what she’s doing, so she comes to the conclusion that she has to hop in a hot air balloon and fly to the North Pole to tell Santa where Ponyville is, or whatever, and so she does. Then all the ponies hug, which apparently makes them radiate purple light, and they all somehow learn a valuable lesson about how love and togetherness is the real meaning of Christmas, but Santa comes anyway (though he never makes an on-screen appearance) and they get presents, the end.

That’s the plot. But what’s it like to actually watch the thing? I’ll tell you: not fun. I only barely managed to sit through all forty-four minutes. All the ponies have high squeaky voices and one of them says “darling” every other word and, overall, they just plain suck.

Of course, the cartoon is aimed at little girls, and it’s definitely the kind of thing little girls would eat up: cutesy-poo characters in bright colors singing and being ponies. But that doesn’t excuse it. Little kids will also like things that the whole family can enjoy, adults included, if you’ll give them the chance. Kids, even little ones, have intelligence; they deserve programming that respects it.

But the most fascinating thing about this cartoon is all the unanswered questions it raises. I confess I’m not really familiar with the My Little Pony brand beyond a vague awareness of its existence. I did occasionally watch the My Little Pony ‘n Friends cartoon because it sometimes featured segments about the Potato Head Kids or the Glo Friends, but I never cared about the title characters. So I don’t really know anything about what goes on in Ponyville. Based on this cartoon, however, there are questions that must be asked.

First of all, how do these ponies pick things up? It’s not as if they just lack opposable thumbs; their feet all end in one colossal toe. Yet they just put their hooves on things and up they come. Do these ponies possess a level of telekinesis?

Secondly, where do the residents of Ponyville come from? Sexual reproduction is a delicate topic rarely covered in a kids’ cartoon, but in this case you really can’t help but wonder. All the ponies—Star Catcher, Sparkleworks, Sweetberry, all of ‘em—are female. There’s not a boy pony anywhere in Ponyville. Frankly, I don’t think that’s very conducive to keeping the population at a sustainable level.

Then there’s Minty and her socks. All the other ponies go about with no clothes at all, as ponies often do. Yet Minty doesn’t just wear socks, she’s obsessed with them. She’s got an enormous collection in her house. Piles upon piles of socks. Nevertheless, Minty is everyone’s friends when clearly she would in reality be labeled as an obvious deviant and probably legally compelled to be on some kind of list.

Perhaps most critical is the issue of the few ponies that can fly. Oh, didn’t you know? A select few of the My Little Ponies have wings and soar majestically through the sky. While I’m sure this was never dealt with in any cartoons or during the playtimes of countless little girls, it’s clear what would happen in a situation like this: a second-class citizenry. There are really two possibilities. In one scenario, the normal ponies would enslave their winged sisters, putting them on leashes and forcing them to, I don’t know, get things off the high shelves or put hay up in lofts. The other possibility is that the flying ponies, totally sure of their superiority over the less able, earthbound Normies living among them, would enslave the others, forcing them to toil in the fields or perform for their amusement a la “Plato’s Stepchildren.” But living together in harmony? I think not.

In any case, A Very Minty Christmas basically sucks and I don’t recommend it. I’ve graciously given it one and a half stars for the inclusion of the aforementioned “Nothing Says Christmas Like a Pair of Socks,” which, I’m forced to admit, I enjoyed.