I caught this uploaded to YouTube last night! ....so it's probably already deleted by now lol.
I was surprised to find the movie style characters in a new special! I really enjoy their design (especially their big sparkly eyes) so I was thrilled when I saw the thumbnail on my youtube 'suggested videos' list and quickly hit play!
I really wasn't thrilled with the MLP movie... It introduced WAY too many characters and new species and new locations, and didn't give any of them time to shine on their own. I didn't like the villain because 'dark and edgy pony' doesn't do it for me. And they gave so much character actions to Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie that the other three suffered greatly. If you dropped Fluttershy, Rarity, and AJ from the movie, it wouldn't have even changed the plot. They only had a few lines each.
Why do I bring this up? Because Rainbow Roadtrip fixed all of my complaints! This actually felt like a MLP episode in movie format, not like a 90-minute commercial for pirate parrots and Animated-Mos-Eisley.
I liked the idea of a town in trouble tricking the Mane Six to come there to help. Of course we know it would have been much simpler just to write to them and ask for their help and of course they would have come, but hey, cartoon logic lol. I liked that RD's "fanclub" was just two youngsters with no cutie marks. (I wish they had both gotten a Wonderbolt-like cutie mark at the end when they did their stunt show! That would have been so adorable.)
I liked that the special gave each of the Mane 6 something to do, even if Fluttershy was just helping Pinkie for most of it. I liked the idea that Kerfluffle just knew in her heart what colors the fabrics were, even though she couldn't see the colors anymore. The fact that almost all the ponies of the village had Minnesota accents made me laugh even while I was rolling my eyes at the same time.
I loved when Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy got the reclusive neighbor pony to start talking to the fancy couple and they all started baking together. That is really what Pinkie excels at! I liked Twilight Sparkle's "wing bling"
even though it was just to sell the toys of Twilight with rainbow wings.
I REALLY loved the background ponies during the final song! We dropped the old-as-time tradition of pastel-ponies-only and got some really vibrant background ponies! Dark blue, dark red, dark green! They were great! Did you see the whole field of green ponies when they were singing in groups of colors? I squee'd! We NEVER get green ponies! And other than Big Mac, it's rare to get a dark red pony so I enjoyed that crotchety old neighbor lol.
Was it perfect? Ugh... no.
The songs were AWFUL. All three of them. (I think there were three?) The opening song was a little catchy, but the other two... ugh. I won't be listening to any of them again, now that I finished the special. Once is more than enough.
As a writer, I'm usually very hard on the scripts of my favorite shows, and yeah this one was a little lacking. The idea of the machine not really draining the color from the village and it just being a catalyst for everyone to stop caring doesn't REALLY work... I mean, we don't see color draining out of anywhere else in Equestria when ponies stop caring, do we? I think it would have made more sense if there was something in the area that triggered it, not just the "we all stopped caring" thing.
I went into it thinking of it as a long episode rather than a second movie, so I guess that's why I wasn't disappointed in the standard-type plot. If this is how we're starting to wrap up the G4 experience, I'm enjoying it.