[2] The film retains the theme of the video games, and centers on an 11-year-old girl named Ai who moves into a village populated with animals where she works to make new friends and find her own dreams.

After being put to work by Tom Nook to deliver goods, Ai befriends four of the village's residents: Bouquet, Sally, Albert, and a human boy named Yū, participating in several activities.

Ai begins to find a series of anonymous messages in bottles that state that a miracle will occur during the upcoming Winter Festival if pine trees are planted in specific points of the village.

Johnny, who had planted the bottles in order to make an entrance dressed as an alien, asks the villagers to help locate some of the pieces that broke off his ship during the descent.

The missing piece turns out to be an injured UFO, one of a larger group that was attracted to the village due to the pattern formed by Ai's lit-up pine trees.

[4] The movie entered production due to the success of Animal Crossing: Wild World, released for the Nintendo DS the previous year, which had shipped over 3 million copies in Japan alone.

[4] Those who ordered advance tickets before the film's debut were eligible to receive vouchers which could be redeemed for hard-to-obtain gold tools in Animal Crossing: Wild World.

[3] Music for Gekijōban Dōbutsu no Mori was contributed by Animal Crossing series composer Kazumi Totaka and arranged by Tomoki Hasegawa, with the film featuring numerous themes from the games.