A Brony Tale

It's not all NZIFF movies. Here's a movie I missed from an earlier festival. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is a phenomenon. The fans of this show are referred to as Bronies, and this is A Brony Tale.

I'm not sure if it's me projecting, but this movie comes off as rather defensive. There are a lot of interview clips with Bronies, where they are basically saying "I like MLP, but I like other stuff too, I’m still a man", which isn’t really the message they should be going for (the message is "I am a man despite linking MLP" rather than "I am a man who likes MLP"). The other part of the movie is following actress Ashleigh Bell (voice of Rainbow Dash and Applejack) as she prepares to go to her first BronyCon. (There is little footage of BronyCon, were they not allowed to film there?) She starts rather apprehensive about meeting Bronies, but soon realises they are just normal people that happen to like MLP. Although some do like MLP a LOT. Then again any fandom (and I'm gonna include sports here) has fanatics, it's in the name.

There are also some talking heads about the psychology of the people involved, but we later find out that the son of one of the researchers is a Brony, so I think we know where that interest came from.

It wasn't really what I was hoping for in a Brony movie, but it could have easily been so much worse (certainly the main publicity image does not help).

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