An Almost Christmas Story is a delightful and wonderous short from Disney produced by Alfonso Cuaron and directed by David Lowery. It was released on Disney+ in mid-November of 2024, but I didn’t get to view it until it premiered on Disney Channel this year earlier this month. It’s loosely based on Rocky, the real life Saw-whet owl that was found in the Rockefeller Christmas tree around mid-November 2020 when the tree was brought to New York.
In this version, Moon (voiced by Cary Christopher) is a young owlet who lives with his family in a snowy covered forest. Moon loves finding shiny things much to the chagrin of his Papa (voiced by Jim Gaffigan). His excitement showing off his new shiny find actually wrecks his family’s nesting place. Papa tells Moon and his younger sibling, Peaky (voiced by Gianna Joseph), to stay in the wrecked nest while he finds a new one, but Moon doesn’t listen to Papa and goes off on his own to find twigs for the nest. While twig gathering, Moon sees the lights of the city on the horizon which distracts him from seeing a hawk swooping in to attack him. Luckily Papa comes to the rescue in time and distracts the hawk while Moon escapes. Unfortunately, Moon hits a tree and injures his wing. Papa flies in and tells Moon to stay in the tree until he returns from leading the hawk away. As Moon recites to himself, “Stay in the tree,” repeatedly, in a nook in the trunk, the sound of chainsaws below cut the tree and make it fall.
Several hours later, Moon awakens in the nook to find himself atop a place filled with shinies of many colors and lights everywhere! Unbeknownst to Moon, he’s at the top of the Rockefeller Christmas tree, all bedecked with ornaments and lights. Moon falls out of the tree and onto the skating rink of Rockefeller Plaza where he runs into a girl named Luna (voiced by Estella Madrigal) skating on the rink with one prosthetic leg. Moon scurries off the ice as various people jostle into him. With his wing still broken, he can’t get back up the tree to where he was before, so he’s grounded in the middle of New York City hungry and all alone. How can he get back home?
The real heart of the story though is the friendship between Moon and Luna who reunites with Moon after a series of misadventures Moon has running away from a trio of tough talking territorial New York City pigeons (voiced by Mamoudou Athie, Phil Rosenthal, and Natasha Lyonne). Luna too is a bit lost and separated from her family, and she finds Moon to be a kindred spirit. As we the audience listen to them talk to one another somewhat, there are times which they actually understand what the other is saying which is brilliant.
At first, I thought the short was done via stop motion animation, but as shown in the behind-the-scenes video from Disney+, everything was actually done via CGI to completely resemble the old fashioned stop motion animated holiday specials from Rankin Bass. Full real models were made physically before scanning and transferring everything to the computers.
Moon and Luna’s world is that of paper and cardboard. All the props and items look like they were made of corrugated cardboard from the trains and buses to the park benches. The background people are flat 2-dimensional pieces of cardboard that move about, while the main characters look like very fancy wooden marionettes draped in real costumes. Moon and his family actually look like they are made of layers of paper too to give them their fluffy feathery bodies. This was the world filmmaker David Lowery had built when he was a kid using cardboard to make setups and people. The whole cardboard and paper style just makes the short seem even more magical when animated.
And just like the old Rankin Bass stop motion animated holiday specials, the narrator to the story is a folk singer, voiced by John C Reilly, who tells Moon’s tale with 4 songs sprinkled in. In a really special nod to inclusion and representation, Luna is voiced by Estella Madrigal who also has a prosthetic leg just like Luna.
If you know what happened to Rocky, the real Rockefeller Center owl, the ending should be no surprise. This was a wonderfully whimsical reimaging of Rocky’s story and how sometimes the seasons have a way of bringing people (and animals) together where everyone has a mutual understanding of one another. Isn’t that what the season is all about, right?
The post Review: An Almost Christmas Story: An Animated Short Filled With Christmas Spirit appeared first on Anime Superhero News.
