One Small Step (2018)

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Cute, cute, cute!

One Small Step, created by Andrew Chesworth and Bobby Pontillas, is an 8 minute long animated short film that is nominated for an Academy Award in that category. Click here to watch it on YouTube. In the description box it says, “TAIKO Studios presents the story of Luna, a Chinese American girl who dreams of becoming an astronaut.” This short film is just so adorable.

Oh my goodness, where do I begin. This was such a beautifully made film. Let’s start with the art. The animation was gorgeous. I loved the art style so much. The colors were so vibrant and I love the cartoonish style. The characters were super cute and every single shot was gorgeously animated. I don’t know anything about animation but I don’t think it was hand drawn. I think this film was made on the computer. I tend to be really picky about certain animation styles but this one I loved very much.

The music was gorgeous. It was simple and beautiful instrumental music. It was matched perfectly to the film’s story line and it just made me feel all the things.

One of my favorite things that some animated films do is not have any talking in the film. I love this because it allows the viewer to come to their own conclusions about what the film is about and how they should feel and think about it. This film accomplished that beautifully. They did this by the character’s wonderfully animated expressions, gestures, and sounds. It was such a delight to watch.

The detail in this film was awesome but it is done so subtly that you are fooled into thinking there isn’t much detail there at all. On first impression, the film seems simply made in every way. Nothing wrong with that. But when you watch it a few more times, you start to realize the insane amount of detail and thought that went into 8 minutes. There is so much story hidden in the background of all of the shots.

I am going to try to give a kind of play by play description of the film as I watched it.

The film opens with a pretty street view of a neighborhood in San Fransisco in the evening. I’ve never been to San Fransisco but this neighborhood is like ones where there is a street on a steep hill and lined all along that street are tall skinny houses that are squished all together and there is no space in between them. You know the ones I’m talking about? Well that is what we see as well as the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. The moon is just coming out and you can just start seeing the stars.

Then you see this adorable little girl, Luna Chu, sitting Indian Style on a rug in front of her TV and she is watching the take off of a space ship going into outer space. She has space magazines spread out around her and some kind of make shift astronaut helmet on her head. Her eyes absolutely light up the moment the rocket lifts off and the biggest smile spreads across her face.

The next scene we see a birthday cake that says, “Happy Birthday Luna” and there is a little purple rocket ship in frosting on the top. That’s when we see her father sitting across from her with a birthday hat on, lighting the candles with this big goofy grin on his face. Luna giggles and blows out the candles. After that, he puts this box on the table, a birthday present for her, and she adorably hops off of her chair, scoots it over next to her dad, hops back up on the chair and looks inside.

There is an ADORABLE pair of little astronaut boots inside with little patches on the sides that show a rocket blasting off. She is in love. Later that evening, we see her hopping around in those shoes and space helmet outside on the sidewalk in front of their house. The dad is inside his opened garage and there is a sign outside that says, “Chu’s Shoe Repair” and then we also see the same thing written in Chinese below it. In the garage we see Luna’s father sitting at a little wooden table with shoes and tools all around him and we then figure out that he is a shoemaker. He made her those little boots himself! So cute, omg.

After he’s done with his work, he is on the sidewalk, shuts his garage door, puts on his own space helmet made from cardboard and holds his arms wide open as Luna comes crashing into them, laughing. He is ready to play with her. They hug and then look up and see the gorgeous light of the moon shining down on them.

Then when we get to see Luna’s imagination come to life. The moon and those little glow in the dark stars we put on our walls and ceilings as a kid are attached to string and they are hanging down all around them. She flops inside this cardboard box, her father follows and sits behind her and whoosh, they take off into space. It looks like they are flying at the speed of light and then they smash through a cardboard cut out of Saturn which is hilarious. As they zoom around space, they finally land on the moon. Luna is ecstatic and is hopping all around the moon when suddenly she stops.

She sees the Earth from the moon and just stares in wonder. Her father comes up behind her, kneels down to her level and they hug while looking at the Earth.

Next you see him tucking her into bed, playtime now over, kissing her forehead, her neon stars glowing all around her bedroom and the soft moon in her window.

It is the next day and Luna’s father is seeing her off to school and she is wearing her space boots. We see her walking in her boots and then we get this transition from childhood to adulthood and she is no longer wearing her space boots but she has a pair of white and blue tennis shoes, similar in color to her boots, and she is walking into college.

We then see this cute montage of Luna and her dad and their cute little routine. Her dad is older now, with gray hair, and walks with a cane. He has breakfast ready for her, a banana, she is in a hurry, kisses him on the cheek, slips on her flip flops and heads out the door. She is working hard in school. They have dinner together every night that he makes himself, traditional Chinese fare. They are happy and adorable. She is still as eager as ever to be an astronaut.

Then she gets a test back with a big fat red F on it and she bangs her head on the desk. She’s running on a school track and trips and falls. She comes home, angry, kicks off her shoes and plops down at the dinner table, arms crossed. Her dad, knowing exactly what she needs, puts a piece of her favorite food in the bowl in front of her and after a second, she picks up her chop sticks and sticks it in her mouth. Later that night, we see Luna’s dad in his little work shop, repairing her shoe that she broke when she tripped while running.

Then things start to get a little harder. Luna stops grabbing breakfast from her dad and giving him a kiss. She is in a hurry and he is left holding out a banana and then puts it down when she runs out the door. Later at night at dinner, he offers her her favorite piece of food and she pushes it away, while being engrossed in a textbook.

He can tell something is wrong. There comes a point where she isn’t at dinner at all. He has food set out for her and she isn’t there. The dad is rubbing his wrist painfully as she finally comes breezing in and goes straight upstairs to study.

Next we see her mailing in an application to an astronaut program and she waits eagerly for a response. She comes home one day and there is an envelope waiting for her on the table. Her father sits patiently on the other side. She opens it. He leans in, eager to find out what it says, she then lays it back down and dejectedly walks upstairs. Her dad is concerned and then hangs his head, sad that it wasn’t good news for her.

Now she is depressed and so down about this whole thing. She’s walking home from college one night in the rain and walks into the house and sees that her dad is not sitting at the table like he usually is. His cain is laying on the floor. A cup of his coffee sitting on the table. No lights are on. He is nowhere in sight.

She is immediately concerned and runs upstairs. The screen fades to black.

Then we see Luna kneeling at her father’s grave, holding three lit incense sticks and you can tell her heart is broken. There is so much sadness in her face. She places the incense at his grave and kneels before the stone as the unforgiving wind whips around her.

She comes home and has a minor meltdown in her room. She tears up all of her astronaut posters, knocks stuff over, throws her things, and then we see her curled up on her bed, sobbing quietly and all alone.

A little later we see Luna enter her father’s workshop. She is sadly packing up his stuff in boxes when she stumbles across the box she used to pretend was her rocket ship when she was a kid. She pulls it out, kneels down and opens it and inside are all of her shoes she has ever had. Her little tiny shoes from when she was a kid to her bigger shoes when she grew up. All of them are repaired and neatly stacked in this box. CUE THE TEARS. She smiles in utter disbelief that all this time her father had kept and fixed all of her shoes. And then inside the box….she finds the little space boots he made for her when she was little. She picks them up and hugs them so close.

Then her gaze lands on a little framed photo hanging on the wall next to his work desk. It’s a photo of the birthday when she got those boots. You see him and her smiling with their little party hats on and she is holding up her space boots so proudly. I am sobbing by now. She has tears in her eyes and has a smile on her face and then takes a big deep breath.

You then see a little montage of her fixing her room back up and hanging up the posters she tore down. You see her at school all organized and working her butt off at her studies.

She comes home from a run, with a new cute short haircut and instead of kicking off her shoes, she gently puts them on the little shoe rack. She is up at night studying and when she gets a test back she has a big fat red A on it and she high fives her classmate. Then you see her graduate the school of astrophysics and I am crying because her dad would have been so proud if he could see her.

One day while she’s at the table sitting in the spot her dad always sat in, she’s studying, and a piece of mail comes shooting inside the mail slot. She picks it up, takes a deep breath, and opens it. She has been officially accepted into the astronaut program. She smiles so big.

The next thing you see is a rocket ship taking off from Earth. It flies through the atmosphere into space and then gently lands on the surface of the moon. The doors open and Luna stands there, in her astronaut suit, closes her eyes, takes a deep breath and then takes “One Small Step” onto the moon. See what I did there?

Get ready for more tears ya’ll. The moment her boot hits the surface of the moon, the scene changes to Luna as a kid and she is stepping on her bed in her little space boots her dad made her and she leaps into her dads outstretched arms. He holds her to him and they hug each other so tightly. This little memory is what she sees and feels the moment she first steps foot on the moon.

Then we see Luna standing on the moon, with her eyes closed and a little smile on her face. A rising bright light makes her open her eyes and she sees that the view of the Earth is being revealed to her, like in her imagination when she was a kid. She looks at it in wonder with tears in her eyes and a little smile on her face. And that’s where it ends. OMG I cried so hard.

This film was so beautiful. The story of this single dad taking such good care of his daughter and nurturing all of her dreams and wishes throughout her life just lit up my heart. He didn’t make a lot of money but he worked so hard to make sure she had everything she could have ever wanted or needed. They had such a special relationship and they both loved each other so much.

Overall, there was nothing I didn’t like about this film. The art was gorgeous, the music was gorgeous and the storyline was gorgeous. I loved that the characters were Chinese American and that the filmmakers beautifully captured this blending of two cultures. I loved that her name was Luna, like the moon. I loved everything.

If you haven’t seen this yet, please check it out. It is only 8 minutes long and it will warm your heart, I promise.