That Was Really Messed Up: “Lost Ollie” Review

Once upon a time there was a thing many families tried to implement. The idea was pretty simple. It was called “Family Night.”

Often on a Saturday night, those with young children would plan an evening that loosely resembled some version of the following:

• Earlier in the day the parents would figure out what good or new movie might be fun for everyone to watch together. While kids would definitely be included in the discussion, parents tended to have final say and likely, their personal entertainment pleasure was sacrificed a bit to protect children from being exposed to plots and images they were not equipped to handle.
  
• The family would tidy up the house on Saturday and perhaps Dad would do dishes while Mom baked some cookies for the evening fun. If it was winter, kids might snuggle between the two parents on the sofa, with all enjoying a big, warm blanket.
  
• Whether popcorn or cookies, hot tea or hot chocolate, the family room lights would go out and all would enjoy the movie, together. Perhaps it would be paused at times (or re-wound) for questions or to see a part a second time.

In retrospect, I must wonder if some of the movies my family watched together ultimately had some harmful effects. However, all-in-all, this is how I remembered things and in general, it was a good time of wholesome bonding and time well-spent.

Of course, the movie(s) Toy Story likely got watched a number of times, as did Beauty and the Beast and other Disney works.

__________

I suppose it would be helpful to say how I was led to watch Lost Ollie, alone here at almost 60-years-old, on a Friday night (last night). Typically during the day/evening I will select a musical artist/band I like on Spotify, and listen to the playlist.

There’s a group called the Hayde Bluegrass Orchestra I really enjoy–and my review here has nothing to do with whatever association with “Lost Ollie” they agreed (or didn’t agree) to–and in the past months their version of All I Have To Do is Dream feels beautiful and makes my heart lighter as I go about my work. For any music lovers who want to take an excursion down memory lane with The Everly Brothers, here is the original piece.

I love a lot of the fifties music, and this cover version really grabs me quite well. I knew that it was the theme song for Lost Ollie and I had only seen the image of a child’s toy and assumed it to be a new kid’s movie. On a whim I decided to find and watch it last night, discovering it was a Netflix mini-series. I watched it from beginning to end (while doing lap projects and sometimes pausing and rewinding…and…mostly…thinking and observing many things about the plot/message and film-making qualities/logic and even potential socio-political agenda).

Yep, all that on my Friday night. I surprise myself that I’m actually taking time on my Saturday to write this, but, I think it is worth consideration.

Before I continue, I want to include two YouTubes–the first is simply the beautiful song by that musical group I really love. The second is the trailer for Lost Ollie.

Below these videos, I will give my thoughts–for whatever they are worth in the big scheme of anything these days.

I have particular interest these days in messaging to children, and to the public in general. As a children’s book author/illustrator, I’m paying more attention to that which is permeating current culture with a lens of critique of anything that further threatens to break down the traditional, healthy and wholesome family and that which is healthy for children, individuals, adults and society.

I came away from Lost Ollie with a number of observations and questions those who think critically might well-ask. I viewed this series not only from the lens of messaging, but artistically, too!

As I watched, I was already forming titles for this review in the back burner of my thoughts. By the end, after riding the weird rollercoaster that this story is (or at least how those that turned the book into film presented/interpreted it), only one title seemed to sum it best:

That Was Really Messed Up

My apologies in advance if you have seen this thing, and if you were enamored by it.

My first and most over-riding question is what was the target age of this movie? I struggle with this throughout the episodes. Knowing one’s audience is important in any creative endeavor.

As I brewed coffee this morning and my thoughts from last night’s movie jaunt perculated in my mind it all suddenly came together. This is the new-normal movie for the obsolete, outdated and antiquated idea of the Saturday-evening family night.

I mean, it holds something for everyone and gosh forbid, someone in the family feel excluded or have to put their desires in subjection to what is most wholesome and healthy for the children. This movie is a product of catering to the least common denominator in the family which apparently is…the adults.

I was confused. I mean, it started well and I was hopeful.

A terribly cute, animated toy was lost and in one of the opening scenes was being discovered in a box by a Thrift Store owner. She was smiling and talking to it and I was drawn in. But within the first several sentences, she threw in a swear word of exclamation.

I noticed that, but was trying to remain open to this potentially cute story for (?) children.

Next, a sweet little girl is in the Thrift Store conversing with the animated toy. This could be fun–a combination of real people interacting with make-believe toys. The little girl even said she would pray that Lost Ollie find his way home (back to little Billy) and she left the store after her endearing conversation with the very cute little toy!

As I continued to travel into this tale for kids I mean for adults I mean…again I’m not really sure the target audience. If this were simply a child’s story I am left with terrible questions. And if it is for adults, I’m left with even more terrible questions. Or, vicey-versa.

As I continued on, these are a sampling of the questions in my mind:

• Why are the toys so violent?
• Why do the toys and the real-life adults–and even the children toward the ending–use bad language? Is this the new normal?
• What is this about?
• Is there subtle socio-political messaging portrayed?
• What is the moral of this story?

If I were to guess at the theme of this story, it seems to be about bullying and about childhood friendship with a toy. The overall story loosely resembles The Velveteen Rabbit or most obviously, Toy Story. But, how this plays out felt jarring to me. And from a film-making, artistic eye, I found myself actually laughing at parts toward the end.

It was just ridiculous! I mean, it was getting later and later (the series last a total of __ minutes and I watched in sequence) and my thoughts were getting more artistically involved in the art/film aspect of it. I must confess I have seen The Disaster Artist (NOT for children!) and found myself thinking that whomever put together Lost Ollie did it in such a disjointed manner that it resembled–if not rivaled–the thought process of the “disaster artist!”

And at that point, I took an excursion into the musings of the absurd and darkly funny.

I mean, there were some scenes to that point that from a film-making standpoint resembled a Stephen King psychological thriller or a film such as Sixth Sense. Just something about the angles, the images and the music–or whatever–that were tracing my mental pathways of interesting films that were for a grown-up audience.

In Lost Ollie, we have a story of a very young, sensitive boy whose mother is dying of cancer (we infer). Somewhere in the middle part of this movie we get a glimpse of him being bullied in a classroom/school scene. As I watched to that point I kept thinking that this is just all too intense for children. I thought a lot from early on in this movie about how much exposure to intensity children now routine experience in our society through film, books, and many other things.

It is not normal, it is not healthy and it is too much. I could side-track with the myriad of ways we are robbing our children of a normal childhood, but, I will get back to my review here of Lost Ollie.

It was too real. The school scene depicted bullying/language and physical violence in a very graphic way. That this story was being told with a cast of real, human children and adults alongside cute, animated fantasy toys, I found artistically and otherwise disturbing.

When little Billy is suddenly found to be in a bar (the only child there, and, unsupervised) insisting they put up his “Lost Ollie” poster, the movie continues a turn for the absurd. Later, little, sweet, sensitive Billy somehow returns to this bar and the school bully–yet another child–enters and there is a confrontation.

The bullied (Billy) now enacts an empowered, revengeful transformation. The two children scumble in this bar (as adults watch) and little sweet Billy catches himself short of letting loose the worst bad language to that point in the movie, beginning to call the bully a name that a child would have only learned from the adults in his world. I actually heard this term as a child being used by one of my parents toward the other, and although I’ve stumbled in times of deep anger with bad language, it is not a term/name that has ever rolled off my tongue.

Little sweet Billy at least catches himself, but not before the scene highlight where he recalls his mother’s words/play in his mind and empowered, stabs the bully in the groin with a pool cue (as I think, the watching adults cheer). I mean, I think that’s what happened. I actually re-wound that part a few times because it was filmed in a confusing, rapid way from front and back angles.

Clearly an adult (like me) would understand what happened there. I’m not so sure a young child would, but, I could be wrong. Given current trends, who knows. So, the message seems to be some form of retaliation and alteration of the protaganist’s innocent nature.

I should also mention the dialogue between dad and young Billy, when he is retrieved from the bar scene. It seemed incongruent to me that the dad would use a certain descriptor of Billy’s “Ollie” rabbit, regardless of how grieving or upset he was in that moment/scene. It just didn’t send a very good or clear message.

Now sure. There is a classic scene in A Christmas Story where little Ralphie lets loose on the school bully. And yes, come to think of it, there are some scenes in that film with allusions to adults and bad language, and otherwise. My family watched this movie routinely every Christmas eve and I consider it a humorous classic.

The messaging in the film was clear and not in favor of bad language or retaliation. It simply depicted in a nostalgic kind of way a variety of things typical in a child’s world which would include the common school bully. What is noteworthy between the two movies is:

• Observing how the teacher handled the situation
• Observing how the mother and the father handled the situation
• Observing the overall take-away messaging
  
  

As for bullying, Lost Ollie soon meets other animated stuff toys on his quest. The carnival scene with the Clown and the Bali Hai puppet-doll is very sweet and reminds me of typical elements of romance in traditional Disney movies. However, the elements of humans involved seem to confuse a number of things in my mind.

I believe that if the audience target is primarily children, there should be continuity of a number of aspects not only in messaging but in the film-making techniques. Again, the idea of merging human actors/drama with animation has a lot of potential but Lost Ollie goes awry in a number of ways.

The clown toy (Bozo, I believe) has become hardened. We witness this animated toy ripping another stuffed, animated toy to shreds on a street-sidewalk. I believe he murdered the animated toy, technically. And of course, there is interjection of philosophical dialogue that only adults would contemplate, following this bizarre scene. I believe the animated stuffed clown is verbally contemplating being driven to do dark things.

I could be wrong, but a child that identifies with cute, stuffed, animated toys later witnessing them doing graphic violence (the clown also inflicts physical violence on cute little Ollie, too) might find this hard to process, even traumatizing. Fifty years ago I don’t think any film-maker in their right mind would have used their talents to create such visually visceral images in a child’s story with no seeming redemptive quality.

Previously, of course ideas of fighting, death and other things might have existed in Disney or other classic stories (think wicked witches, evil step-mothers or arrogant queens) where there are some antagonistically-needed dark elements. Yet, these were not so overtly graphic in detail and the antagonism these presented were overcome in the protagonist(s) in ways that affirmed their good character and discredited the evil character(s).

I was also confused from a film-making standpoint of the time and sequence. There was nothing in the way the movie was made (to my eye) that would have indicated a time-setting other than generally current until the unusual scene at the carnival auction that dates it as being 1970.

Wait. If little “Nina” who appeared about seven years old in that “1970” scene was in fact that age, nothing else makes sense to me. I was born in 1963 and would be a fifty-nine-year old contemporary of little Billy’s dying mother!

Additionally, the usage in this segment, and others, of fifties music further messes with my viewing mind! I just don’t understand!

I suppose, perhaps the story of Lost Ollie and little Billy theoretically could have unfolded in the classrooms/setting of the 1980’s-1990’s…but something just doesn’t seem consistent and congruent. And I admit, I may be missing something or over-thinking.

From a movie-making observation, the part which made me want to laugh did involve what struck me as a repeated technique used by film-maker Wes Anderson in some enjoyable (grown-up) comedies such as The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic. I’ve noticed in a number of his films (usually involving Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller) there are highlighting action-packed humorous scenes that have just the right music to them. The music involves some type of lively drum-roll-laden or otherwise fun soundtrack.

In the absurd bar scene with the two children in Lost Ollie, I recall an upbeat, drum-rolling musical riff utilized at some point and it was this, coupled with the actions/dialogue, that pushed me over the edge into laughing at it all, in that moment. It was at this point I likely formed my title, This is Really Messed Up!

Not only were the most obvious elements of children’s messaging, plot, images pretty messed up–so was the disjointed assembly of otherwise great film-making techniques.

By the ending scenes, I kinda felt like I’d been violated in a number of intellectual/artistic/moral ways. I was just up for watching a child-like, potentially sweet little story last night with curiosity over how All I Have To Do is Dream fit into the movie and my love for Hayde Bluegrass Orchestra.

The ending message wasn’t too bad–even quite sweet but also somewhat unsurprising how it all came together–but the travel route the movie took to end up there was circituitous and dark. Oh, and I forgot to mention the family early on having a literal food fight in their home to show family bonding.

I just don’t know–I’m out of the loop now I suppose–if all of this is the new normal. If that kind of food fight had occurred around our family table, I kinda think I would have stepped in, if necessary, rather than gleefully participated!

So back to the ending scene which left some of the biggest questions in my mind.

I don’t want to spoil this (too too badly!) for anyone who might still watch it after reading all this…but…

In some of the last scenes, we see the grown-up hands of Billy (with images of muscular arms, well-kempt attire) methodically mending Lost Ollie (spoiler alert…he is found…) on a nice, contemporary kitchen counter (oh wait…just getting this somewhat…the timeline…my bad…) and he has a wedding ring on.

The little girl in the opening who prayed for Lost Ollie re-surfaces at this point and is found involved in the ending.

The ending itself is sweet, but…questions…always questions.

There is continuity in some way regarding demographic-inclusion/sub-themes. I’m not sure of the intentional selections of various elements (Billy, a caucasian boy, seems to have been adopted and his mother is hispanic, and there are scenes addressing the difference in their appearance and also, the element of her not having health insurance for the cancer tests–and this is a very real issue, but, I pondered why it was included) and the little girl who is in the beginning and ending is bi-racial. This would indicate to me that Billy found love as an adult with a woman of different ethnicity, or perhaps that he adopted this child, just as he was adopted.

My point here does not have to do with race or adoption, per se, or anything else many in our culture might be quick to call me out for even noticing…I simply wondered why we never saw Billy’s spouse, presumably the child’s natural or adoptive mother. The wedding ring stood out in the repair-Ollie close-up, so clearly. Little, sensitive Billy who sadly lost his (adoptive) mother to cancer at a young, tender age, has grown up to marry and presumably, find love in the world, as most humans hope for.

Billy has a seven-ish-year-old beautiful daughter, who also interacts with Ollie in the end. It comes together in a potentially very beautiful way.

Yet, I wanted to see more. Billy’s young life depicted his mother and his father together, as family.

After all, this is very arguably a family movie, right?

So. Why don’t we see Billy’s wife? Ever? In the end.

Billy was close with his mother. There are some very logical parallels to his adult/daughter relationship and the last scenes after Ollie has been found by adult Billy.

Again, where is this child’s mother?

Emotionally and in every other way, I wanted to see her, too! I wanted to see the three of them together in the same, previously interjected type family scenes (that were of beautiful presentation) kind of like in The Lion King. You know…the circle of life theme would have worked well to bring this mess of a movie somewhat together.

Yet, we don’t see the mother. We are left with ambiguity.

I am interested in children’s books, children’s movies and current messaging.

There is a big difference between elements teaching children to accept different, non-traditional situations and the normalizing of such things.

I suppose I could keep wasting my Saturday here delving into the potentially tacit propaganda element of Lost Ollie but I won’t.

I’ve lost a lot of time already, but I just wanted to stimulate thoughtful critique of how much else we have lost and are losing these days…