Thelma la licorne

Glitter, fantasy, pink, unicorns. Check, check, check, check. Another film about staying true to who you are; having fun while doing it! Yes, there are plenty of predictable cliches here, but a fun watch for some distraction. As long as you are you expecting any in depth meaning with lasting emotional influence. Not to say there are not good lessons and themes played on throughout the film, but they are not presented in any way that we have not all seen before. It is based on characters in the book by Aaron Blabey, actually two books. Blabey also did The Bad Guys, highly recommended books + film. These illustrated children's books do indeed follow the same general truth for adult's books- namely, that books are almost always better than the film!

Thelma the pony, Otis the donkey, and Reggie the llama are lowly farm animals who dream of becoming rock stars as The Rusty Buckets. They try to get into SparklePalooza, but are dismissed by the judges before they even start playing. A carrot and accidental glittering gives Thelma a new look and newfound popularity.

This is a simple Netflix animated movie for the kiddies. Adults will probably get bored with this derivative story. I do like the start although it is a bit short. The movie never surprises once it gets on the tracks. I would have liked staying on the farm and make this about the farm hierarchy. This is fine... for the kids.

As a huge fan of Aaron Blabey's original books it keeps the core messaging of "be yourself" but changes how Thelma is revealed which is no where near as touching or meaningful as the original story.

The extra characters are funny and the secondary story of the rival singer feel like filler vs actually being a pivotal plot point which again takes away from the power of the core message the books conveyed perfectly.

On the whole is modern and bright and my kids loved it so it gets a pass for the underlying "just be yourself" but I would have preferred it more aligned to the books.

Alas Aaron Blabey signed off so it is what it is.

If you've never read the book, the movie might come across as new and heartwarming. I read this book almost every night, and what's just a fun story about a pony pretending to be a unicorn and being famous, the movie takes that and is fully bloated of a new plot of her desperately wanting to be in a band and be a singer that's known well, which takes away from the aspect that she just wanted to be a unicorn in the book for the feel of being a unicorn. So my kids didn't like it, and I hate how every kids movie has to be a musical of some sort, it just feels overdone, and the movie comes across as a weird merge of 70s Hollywood with modern technology, which just makes the film odd to me. Thelma tries way too hard to be trendy and aim at kids. And the voice actress does a tremendous job, I guess it just feels off from what the book shows you, it just doesn't feel like Thelma.

This movie will definitely keep you entertained for 1 hr and a half it's cute, very funny/weird, and charming animation. The characters are nice although the design and movements of some characters are questionable to say the least but that just adds to the comedic tone of this movie. The pace is very nice and it gets done what needs to get done. The songs are good, I don't think they're great, but it fits with this kind of movie. The animation isn't anything groundbreaking, but I thought the animation was better than I thought it was gonna be especially judging from the trailer, so that's nice.

So overall, I very fun film that, while not for everyone, will make you laugh and definitely keep you entertained for the time being.