"The Rarest Stars Shine Brightest"

5 December 2024

3 mins

We have lift-off.

Typical, eh? You wait ages for a story about kids on a spaceship and then two come at once! One is 'Star Wars: Skeleton Crew', the other is Montefiore Einstein’s Christmas commercial—a three-minute yarn with hints of 'The Goonies' and 'A Grand Day Out'.

When New York suffers a blackout thanks to Mrs Botticelli’s hamster, five children—each of whom lives with a rare condition—band together to save the city. As the plucky VO states: "No one's got more grit than a bunch of kids with rare diseases".

These are piebaldism, achondroplasia, amplified musculoskeletal pain syndrome, spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia dwarfism, and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, but what matters right now is ingenuity and camaraderie. That's how they turn schematics drawn up in a local diner into an actual rocket.

Once in space, the gang uses a wheelchair for extra boost and a cane to hit the emergency brake—a neat way to show how everyone has a part to play in life, regardless of illnesses, injury, or disabilities. It's quite an operation to gather enough stars to light the Big Apple, but the hospital has always believed in those underestimated by society.

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