My Little Pony: The Princess Promenade

My Little Pony: The Princess Promenade is one of the many direct-to-video films made during the third generation of the My Little Pony franchise. It released in February 2006.

The Princess Promenade was made available on hubworld.com (a successor of Hasbro's MonkeyBarTV website), alongside My Little Pony: A Very Minty Christmas and My Little Pony Crystal Princess: The Runaway Rainbow but were later removed from the site.

Plot
During the annual spring promenade of Ponyville, Pinkie Pie, Zipzee, and Wysteria fall into an underground crevice, where they find and free Spike from his containment. Before long, Wysteria is roped into the task of being Ponyville's princess.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) While the other direct-to-video films made for the third generation of the My Little Pony franchise are saccharine and contain occasional continuity errors, but otherwise do a fairly decent job of pandering to young girls, The Princess Promenade is the only film with an abhorrent and objectionable storyline.
 * 2) Some of the characters are rather detestable:
 * 3) *Spike is rather unlikable in this film; after he deems Wysteria a princess on the spot, he essentially infringes on her normal activities by saying "Princesses do not [insert action here]" over and over without once telling her what actions princesses do perform. When Wysteria can no longer put up with Spike, he even proceeds to guilt-trip her. Spike is also never redeemed or punished for his actions at all.
 * 4) *Wysteria, the main protagonist, isn't that much better; at one point, she overreacts when seeing an unattractive weed for no discernible reason.
 * 5) *While Zipzee is a tolerable character, her running gag of spectacularly sneezing due to pollen allergies (despite being a Breezy) gets very grating.
 * 6) The music numbers, while decent to listen to, are poorly spread out throughout the film.
 * 7) Like the franchise's other direct-to-video films during this generation, there are numerous continuity errors and oversights:
 * 8) Spike's decision to dub Wysteria as the princess of Ponyville is never adequately explained, aside from her freeing him from the noxious underground weeds that he was contained within. Making this oversight worse is that everyone in Ponyville automatically goes along with it regardless, sounds familiar?
 * 9) At one point, Tra La La and Tiddlywink (the other two main Breezies of the film) realize that Zipzee is missing, despite Zipzee's whereabouts already being established to them some time prior.
 * 10) How is it possible for Pinkie Pie and Minty to accidentally build their promenade floats so that they're meshed together by the time the two realize this?
 * 11) Occasional laughable dialogue, such as when Minty shouts "Wow! Purple spiky things!" when introduced to Spike.
 * 12) While the ending where the characters tell the audience that "they are princesses too" clearly tries to convey a message of treating others as equals, this sense of morality is botched by BQ#2 above.
 * 13) Cheap-looking and cut-rate animation, as usual with all the other generation 3 direct-to-video films. It also suffers from many animation errors.
 * 14) * After Zipzee sneezes herself out of the window and Wysteria asks if she is okay, Wysteria's flower crown turns into a flower that is going to be seen later in the film.
 * 15) * As Wysteria is looking out over the kingdom before Spike walks over to her and she is asking if she is the right princess her cutie mark isn’t present.
 * 16) * As Wysteria tells Spike she has an idea how she can still be a princess and herself her mane colors get put on wrong so it starts off with purple instead of white.
 * 17) * During the last song when Spike says that spring is truly here, as they pan over the ponies, even though Rainbow Dash is a princess on the float, she appears to be in the crowd too.

Good Qualities

 * 1) As mentioned prior, the soundtrack is decent to listen to.
 * 2) The voice acting is good, despite it can get annoying and obnoxious.
 * 3) As mentioned earlier, the film still tries to teach strong morality of treating others as equals.
 * 4) This marks the first appearance of the first and only male generation 3 character, Spike.

Trivia
Many of the film's cast, including Britt McKillip, Andrea Libman, Kelly Sheridan, and Kathleen Barr, would later be cast in Lauren Faust's mh:besttvshows:My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic four years later.

The Movie
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Video
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