The animated movie premieres on May 17 on Netflix.
The Big Picture
- The
Thelma the Unicorn
trailer is sparkly and upbeat, showcasing Thelma’s dream to be in Sparklepalooza. - The movie delves into themes of identity, exploring whether love is based on talent or appearance.
- Director Jared Hess, known for
Napoleon Dynamite
, co-wrote and directed the adaptation.
With just a little over a month until its premiere, Netflix decided to unveil the trailer for Thelma The Unicorn. The animated movie centers around a pony that desperately wants to show off her singing talents to the world, but Thelma’s only able to do that after being mistaken for a magical creature. The movie is based on a children’s book that sold over a million copies, and it premieres on May 17.
The trailer for Thelma the Unicorn is everything you’d expect from it: Sparkly and upbeat. It does a quick overview of the pony’s trajectory and her desperate dream of one day being a part of the musical event Sparklepalooza. Her life changes after an accident leaves her soaked in pink paint and glitter, and it’s singing time after that. Despite its target audience, the trailer for Thelma The Unicorn also makes it pretty clear that identity will be a big theme in the movie.
It’s pretty easy to understand Thelma’s worries: does the public love her because of her talent or because she’s shiny and bright? If she takes away her unicorn layers, will they still value her talents? It might sound too deep for a kid’s movie, but we all know they have given us the feels many times before. It’s up to director Jared Hess to find the correct balance between the sparkly world of unicorns and fame and the deeper themes that the movie wants to touch on.
Eclectic Director Jared Hess Has a Lot On His Plate
Even though Hess has been away from feature film directing for quite a while – his last movie before Thelma The Unicorn was 2015 comedy Masterminds – we’ll be talking about him a lot in the coming years. The director is attached to helm the highly anticipated Minecraft movie, Nicktoons and Shanghai Dawn. For Thelma The Unicorn, Hess co-wrote the script with his wife Jerusha Hess, and they both adapted it from the children’s books by author Aaron Blabey. In an official statement, the duo of screenwriters called adapting Thelma The Unicorn “a dream come true” and that “the lovable misfits in his books feel right at home” for them.
The duo became one of the biggest references for misfits back in the early aughts because they wrote Napoleon Dynamite, which later spawned a sequel animated series. For Thelma The Unicorn, the Hesses recruited some of their long-time collaborators to do the voice acting, including Jon Heder (Blades of Glory), Will Forte (Saturday Night Live), Zach Galifianakis (The Beanie Bubble), Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords), Edi Patterson (The Righteous Gemstones), Ally Dixon (The Croods: Family Tree) and Fred Armisen (Wednesday). The title character is voiced by Alabama Shakes’ Brittany Howard in her first-ever acting role.
Netflix premieres Thelma The Unicorn on May 17. You can watch the trailer below:
This article was originally published on collider.com