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About This Film
Fei Fei grows up with stories of Chang’e, the moon goddess associated with the Mid-Autumn Festival, and clings to those stories after her mother’s death. When her father begins a new relationship, she builds a rocket to prove that Chang’e is real and travels to the moon, where grief and myth become part of the same emotional journey. Glen Keane’s musical fantasy makes the Moon Festival central to both family memory and plot mechanics. The opening family dinner, mooncakes, reunion symbolism, Chang’e legend, and full-moon imagery all establish a holiday tradition that Fei Fei treats as a link to her mother. The film’s larger theme is learning that honoring the past does not require refusing the future.
Famous Quote
“Magnetic levitation's the coolest.”— Young Fei Fei
Vibe
Mid-Autumn Festival —
Watch For
- Watch the opening Moon Festival dinner for how food, story, and family memory establish the emotional stakes before the fantasy begins.
- Notice the contrast between Fei Fei’s precise homemade rocket and Lunaria’s fluid musical fantasy.
- Track mooncake imagery as both holiday custom and narrative clue.
- Pay attention to Chang’e and Fei Fei as parallel figures whose grief has frozen them in different ways.
Production Notes
Netflix identifies Over the Moon as Glen Keane’s feature-directing project, produced by Gennie Rim and Peilin Chou. Netflix Family explicitly describes the Moon Festival as a time when families gather and links the film’s Chang’e story to Mid-Autumn tradition. Pearl Studio’s participation is important to the production’s Chinese cultural foundation, while Sony Pictures Imageworks handled animation. Audrey Wells wrote the original screenplay; the film later became associated with her final creative work after her death in 2018. The result combines American studio-musical form with Chinese myth and holiday practice.
Trivia
- Netflix released the film in 2020.
- Glen Keane directed, with John Kahrs as co-director.
- Cathy Ang voices Fei Fei and Phillipa Soo voices Chang’e.
- Netflix’s own family materials explicitly identify the Moon Festival/Mid-Autumn Festival as the family celebration in the film.
- The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature.
Legacy
Over the Moon became one of the most visible mainstream animated features built directly around Mid-Autumn Festival mythology. Its importance is not simply that it introduced Chang’e to many international viewers, but that it tied the legend to a modern family dealing with bereavement, remarriage, and continuity. The film works especially well in this collection beside Festival Moon: one uses Mid-Autumn to examine social pressure and debt in 1950s Hong Kong, while the other uses it as a family-memory framework in contemporary animation. Together they show the range of meanings a single observance can carry.