The Story as it Stands (aka A Monkey with Fireworks)

Here's the basic idea of the story, as conceived in the meeting. There are plenty of opportunities for gags, but the key is that now we have:
1)a solid motive to get to the stars in the sky - wants to get home, and 2)a beginning - monkey knocks star down to island with firework,
middle - mistakes star for starfish and star gets frustrated,
climax - star discovers monkey is responsible for his fall, and
end - star gets back up to space on a firework, but knocks down the moon.

So here we go:

[Unseen exposition]{A monkey on an island discovers a crate of fireworks that have washed ashore. He begins to play with them and figures out how they work. He shoots them off over and over until... }

A star is knocked out of the sky by a blinding flash of sparkling light. We see him soaring down to the ocean, skipping across it, bouncing across the island beach, and coming to a full-tilt face plant. The monkey comes in "are you okay little starfish?" The star is understandably dazed.
The star makes every attempt to convince the monkey that he is not a starfish, (opportunities for very many gags here) and that he needs to get back to the sky, which seems practically impossible. The monkey, suspending his disbelief, tries everything he can think of to help the star get back up (gags of foiled and very stupid attempts). Finally, he suggests that if anything could work to get him up there, it would be 'these'... he takes the star to the fireworks crate and shoots one off to show him. Upon seeing the sparkly explosion, the star realizes the monkey is responsible for his fall, and freaks out. After calming down, the star realizes that the monkey is right, he can probably use the fireworks to get home. After one or two inevitably foiled attempts (i.e. hanging on by the wick, or using cracklers without realizing the difference, or not hanging on tight enough, etc.) the star is finally launched back into space in a sparkly explosion, propelling him back to where he came from.

then...

the monkey looks in the crate to see one firework left, and just can't help but send it off, and we see him trying to run for cover as everything glows brighter and brighter around him. Until finally the moon falls down with a thud on the island. "What the hell was that!" he declares, sitting/rolling up to reveal the firework lodged in his eye (gag - parody of Le Voyage Dans La Lune [France 1902] http://www.greatestfilms.org/voya.html)

That's the story as best I can re-iterate from the brainstorming giggle-fest with DQ. I did patch some points on my own, just to make it all work so we have a quilt with no missing patches to start from... But let the ideas pour, I'd like to hear them. It's all pretty flexible, but I think this story stands very well as it is. Lots of visual animation, with glowing, fireworks, nightscenes, etc. and great opportunity for character development, with a twist - full circle ending. All easily done in 2 minutes.

Let the brain juices flow! cheers!

~Gord