BRONIES

THE EXTREMELY UNEXPECTED ADULT FANS OF MY LITTLE PONY

Laurent Malaquais' eye-opening documentary is split into four segments over the course of its 88-minute running time. These are "Who Are The Bronies?", "Convention Season Begins", "The Best Night Ever", and "A Long Way From Equestria".

So, to answer the first segment's question, who - or what - exactly are bronies? I didn't know the answer myself until I researched this title online moments prior to watching it for review. But it turns out that bronies are adult fans of the 'My Little Pony' franchise which was rejuvenated in 2010 by Lauren Faust, whose TV series "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" apparently stripped away any former sexism associated to the brand and created a show that was capable of bonding young girls with their parents.

I'm only repeating what I've read.

"There's this huge movement of guys in high school and college who are so into this show" argues one young man near the start of this probe into the fierce cult adoration of Faust's bright, garish cartoon show.

We meet a handful of self-confessed bronies - including Americans Alex Tibcken, Starlight Ironhoof (real name?), Lyle Gilpatrick, Geoffrey Hellstrand, Jeffrey Wells and S R Foxley ("the writing is wonderful; the voices are impeccable") along with wannabe composer Yoav Landau in Israel, and Asperger's Syndrome sufferer Daniel Richards in England.

In truth, they're all a little peculiar. And yet, they're likeable enough people - and certainly not the enemies of society that an opening montage of disparaging US TV footage portrays them as: they're casually written off by sceptics as weirdoes, paedophiles, creeps and being involved in "sexual deviancy".

We also meet Faust herself, who goes some way into explaining her motivations and what she hoped to achieve, as well as her own surprise at the widespread appreciation of her reimagining of the brand. Elsewhere, the pretty Tara Strong, who provides one of the voices on the show, offers her own positive thoughts on the show and its league of fiercely loyal fans.

Occasionally, onscreen text explains brony lingo (though sometimes unnecessarily: do you really need to be told that "pony merch" refers to merchandise relating to My Little Pony?).

While these early scenes do engage to a mild extent, the film doesn't really gather steam until we reach the second segment and cover the largest convention catered specifically to these people, Bronycon.

This introduces even more characters, such as voice actors Peter New and Lee Tockar, as well as military man Michael Rice. The latter reveals that there's a large quota of men in the US army who love the show but are afraid of being branded as gay if they confess to such ostensibly feminine pastimes.

The convention footage is genuinely warming, offering a true sense of harmony and acceptance that can't help but put a smile of viewers' faces. These people genuinely love their subject, and are perfectly at home in the convention environment - singing, dancing, holding auctions, getting playfully slapped by Strong ... It's all good fun.

It's testament to this cult phenomenon's size that the film started as a Kickstarter project with an anticipated budget of $60,000 but then went on to raise closer to $350,000 from fans - thus enabling Malaquais to traverse the globe in a bid to discover who far-reaching its popularity is.

Perhaps though, BRONIES's biggest asset is also its greatest flaw. It is a celebration of brony culture, and enjoyably so (even for me, someone who's never watched the "My Little Pony" show and could never pretend to understand the affection these people have for it). But it's all very one-sided: there is very little exploration of why these people have gravitated to a cartoon series aimed at kids, albeit with a very positive message about friendship at its core. Malaquais - a self-confessed brony - doesn't seem concerned with examining whether such obsessions can become unhealthy (surely, any obsession is unhealthy at some level ...?) and consequently this emerges as a little more than an advert for Bronycon.

Also, note that Faust is an executive producer of this documentary...

BRONIES is very entertaining, then, but unfulfilling as a documentary. It may well be that Channel 4 will get wind of this phenomenon at some point and produce a much more balanced, perhaps cynical, view of it in some dubiously enjoyable 1-hour documentary at some point.

MVD Visual's DVD is region free and presents the film uncut in its original anamorphic widescreen ratio. The picture quality is excellent: sharp, clean, natural - for a shot-on-digital documentary, it really does look great.

I can't find any real complaint with the English 2.0 audio track either. Optional English subtitles are well-written and easy to read.

The disc opens to a static main menu page. From there, a static scene-selection menu allows access to the film via 15 chapters.

Extras come in the form of two additional segments that were deleted from the final cut. The first is a 6 minute journey to England, Manchester to be more specific, which evidences that the British are just as keen to get involved with this strange phenomena. The second is a 10 minute visit to Galacon in Germany. Both have excellent 16x9 picture quality, and are presented in English with optional subtitles.

BRONIES is fun. Weird, unwittingly so I feel, but fun. It doesn't explore the psychology of fandom or the fans themselves to qualify as top rank documentary filmmaking, but does entertain in an admittedly one-sided (wholly positive) manner.

By Stuart Willis