Thelma (Brittany Howard) has spent a lifetime dreaming of bigger, better opportunities. Hoping to exchange her farm-pony life for one as a musical sensation, Thelma and her donkey pals Otis (Will Forte) and Reggie (Jon Heder) are The Rusty Buckets, a band ready for their big break. They may have just found it, as they get a chance to audition for the concert of the year—Sparklepalooza. But before they can play a single note, the judges reject them, callously saying they have no “it” factor.
Luckily for Thelma, she’s about to get the makeover of a lifetime, courtesy of a very funny freak accident, in which barrels of glitter and pink paint spill all over her. Throw in a carrot glued to her forehead, and Thelma goes from humble pony to shimmering unicorn in an instant, immediately launching her powerful singing voice into superstardom.
Directed by Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) and Lynn Wang (Unikitty!), Thelma the Unicorn is the latest feature from Netflix’s animation arm. You typically have an idea of what to expect from older animation studios like Disney, Ghibli, or Laika, but Netflix has been all over the place, largely using third parties to animate their films. Lately, the streaming service has shifted to in-house projects and co-productions like Klaus, The Sea Beast, Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood, and Wendell & Wild. Those four examples contain four drastically different animation styles—traditional, CG, rotoscope, and stop-motion—so it’s hard to know what exactly to anticipate from Netflix.
