Tokyo Godfathers (2003) is basically Three Men and a Baby, except it's an animated movie from Japan. And the three men are homeless. Also, they're not all men.
Look, I'm just trying to find a contemporary point of comparison.
On Christmas Eve, alcoholic "old man" Gin (he's forty-something), transvestite Hana, and teenage girl Miyuki find an abandoned baby while scavenging through the trash. The three have formed a dysfunctional family of sorts on the city streets, and the baby dredges up feelings in them all, of their own abandonment, or of the wrong turns made, that led them here.
Tokyo Godfathers becomes an allegorical quest of sorts, where the Three Wise Men bear the gift of baby Jesus himself as a good luck omen on the trek to finding its parents. The movie is most successful in capturing nighttime Tokyo distinctively from its usual portrayal as a multi-million dollar electrical bill neon metropolis. This trio live in dimly lit back alleys behind brown and concrete slabs. It's another Christmas movie where festive cheer seems always just out of the characters' reach, and they find, in themselves, in each other, and the infant, a reason to continue.
The movie seems so good as a concept that it's frustrating how it never fully coheres. The tone is frequently loud and screechy, when it demands to be somber and poignant. The comedy is broad and easy, when it could be dry and truthful. Directors Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress) and Shogo Furuya work in some nice moments throughout, particularly in dealing with the pain and confrontation of the trio's past, but it's lazy how the story's progression is forced through a series of Christmas miracles.
Tokyo Godfathers and The Meaning of Christmas
The major holiday standard in this film is Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," which is used in Die Hard. Tokyo Godfathers occasionally becomes an action movie, because it suffers an identity crisis. In its heart, it's about family. Everyone needs one, at least of some type.
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