For many people, a familiar pastime in the weeks leading up to major winter holidays is gathering with family members and watching holiday movies, be they in a theater or on television. During the month of December, the Falls Free Press will return to our tradition of “The 12 Films of Christmas,” focusing on new holiday movies for the year 2024—a year that can still do with plenty of peace and joy. We will review each film, whether naughty or nice, and let you know where to watch.
There aren’t many short films that produce the same feelings in an audience as does a full-length feature. When it comes down to the producers Alfonso Cuarón and David Lowery, all things are apparently possible though, as their animated short An Almost Christmas Story breaks the ideas of stop-motion and hand-drawn animation, reaching the same heights as the Spider-Man: Spiderverse films.
Filmed using handcrafted cardboard backdrops and CGI main characters, An Almost Christmas Story brings us into the world of Moon, a curious, free-thinking, overly exhaustive young owl, who after a narrow escape from a sparrow, finds shelter in a tree away from its family. Moon awakens to realize his safe harbor tree was cut down to decorate Rockefeller Center. Far from home with a broken wing, Moon explores the ice rink area until finding a young girl named Luna, also lost in the city and unable to walk well with a prosthetic leg. Despite their language barrier, the two team up to explore and find food, and discover they both have a lot in common–most of all their names–and need each other to find their way home.
The best part of the film is the use of different forms of animation. Backdrops and unseen characters all assembled from cardboard and cheaply-used products like coffee filters and straws, moved at 12 frames per second. Their blurry nature would feel abnormal in a larger story, but while focusing on the smaller child and owl, animated clearly, these external personas are barely a blip in the world, as they would be to a child where everything new in is larger than life.
David Lowery, producer and director, has been cited as saying this concept came from his own childhood. “I used to build cities out of cardboard in the basement all the time. In my house growing up, we had a box where we would just put excess cardboard because we just used it for arts and crafts all the time… And I just thought, what if we just make New York and everything out of cardboard, and that will inform the aesthetics of everything else, because everything else needs to fit into that world and feel like it’s a part of it.”
In addition to the characters, the film features narration and music from John C. Reilly as a homeless folk singer who, in the spirit of Burl Ives as the snowman in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, asks the question many people ask this time of year: “What makes a story a Christmas story?” Moon doesn’t understand the holiday as an owl. Luna doesn’t understand how it can be Christmas when she’s so far from family. As the narrator sings:
“Making space in the manger
Making time, taking part
That’s the spirit of Christmas.
Offering peace to the whole wide world
Every boy, every girl…
Goodwill towards all
And peace on earth.”
Seeing Christmas as the spirit of helping others, no matter near or far, regardless of race, species, or condition of life, An Almost Christmas Story is the story we need in this politically-charged country as we near the end of 2024.
An Almost Christmas Story is available to stream on Disney+.
