Like a solitary episode of a comic book rather than an entire series, the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special tells an entire short and sweet story in a brisk 44 minutes.

The special, one of James Gunn’s last projects with Marvel before going to run the DCEU, is now airing on Disney+. This closes out the fourth phase of MCU stories.

The story is simple: Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is holed up on Knowhere with a bunch of non-Terrans at Christmastime, which leads Drax (Dave Bautista) and Mantis (Pom Klementieff) to concoct a plan to give their buddy a memorable Christmas, though they don’t know all that much about the holiday. What they do know is that the pop culture-loving Quill is fond of the movies of Hollywood icon Kevin Bacon, so they high-tail it to Hollywood to abduct him.

After an adventure on Hollywood Boulevard, complete with photos with faux Marvel characters, the two find one of the ubiquitous Maps of the Stars vendors and locate Kevin at home. Bacon, who plays himself, is at first reluctant to accompany the two into outer space on their weird mission, but after a little hypnosis-based convincing, is literally on board for the journey. Whether Peter will be thrilled at being gifted an actual human being is not something they consider.

How this all plays out is part of the fun, as are a lot of the little embellishments Gunn gives us, like Drax’s hatred of Go-bots leading to a beatdown of one hapless costumed character, a Bruce Wayne diss, Maria Bakalova voicing Cosmo the Spacedog, Bacon watching campy Christmas classic Santa Claus vs the Martians at home, and a rotoscoped intro and outro for the story starring the voice of Michael Booker as Yondu.

Rotoscoping is an animation technique where artists trace over photographs, and it’s used to tell a flashback story in which Yondu trashes young Peter’s attempts to celebrate Christmas for the first time after leaving Earth. There’s more to the story, of course, and it’s an inventive way to weave in a story featuring a younger version of Star-Lord, and the technique adds to the special’s retro vibe.

Best of all, as this is a James Gunn joint, the soundtrack features killer retro holiday tunes, like “Christmas Wrapping” by The Waitresses, “Fairytale of New York” by the Pogues, along with Fountains of Wayne with the made-for-this-show “I Want an Alien for Christmas” and Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas doing a cover of SNL‘s “Christmas Treat.”

Gunn adds an original tune as well, with an alien band played by the Old 97s jamming to “I Don’t Know What Christmas Is (But Christmastime is Here)” with all of Knowhere rocking along with them (and Peter correcting all their Xmas misconceptions.)

The special is fun and fluffy, with lots of charm. It’s not quite the masterpiece that Marvel’s Halloween special Werewolf by Night turned out to be, but it will certainly get viewers into the spirit of the holiday.