Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Lost Ollie’ On Netflix, A Creepy Show About A Lost Stuffed Animal That Goes Places ‘Toy Story’ Wouldn’t Dare

Not every show for children has to be all brightly-lit and candy-coated. But there’s a difference between something that’s a little dark and foreboding and something that’s unnecessarily grown-up and creepy. We were thinking of that while we were watching a new Netflix series based on a popular children’s book.

LOST OLLIE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A boy in a suit searches the woods for his stuffed bunny. “How long we’ve been friends?” he remembers his bunny asking. “We’ve been friends… forever,” the boy replies in the memory, and we see a shot of him as a baby touching the bunny for the first time.

The Gist: Billy (Kesler Talbot) is desperate to find his patchwork stuffed bunny Ollie (Jonathan Groff). But we see Ollie in a puddle somewhere, then he ends up in a box, brought to a local antique store owned by a woman named Flossie (BJ Harrison). Ollie finds himself on a shelf, a tag painfully punched in his ear. He tries to escape but gets snagged on his tag. He so wants to get back to Billy, but he has no idea where he is. A little girl wants to buy him but he persuades her to leave him on the shelf (yes, kids can see him talk).

Ollie sees a star on his hand and he knows that Billy gave it to him as a reminder that they would never be apart. But the drool from the shop’s dog distracts him; he’s saved from being torn apart by a toy clown named Zozo (Tim Blake Nelson). He’s been at the store for quite awhile, long enough to have some history with a ballet dancing toy that’s no longer there.

As Ollie tries to jog his memory, he thinks back to playing pirate with Billy, and Daddy (Jake Johnson) coming back from work and dismayed that Billy is playing and making a mess. He wants Billy to take a bit of responsibility, especially given the condition Mamma (Gina Rodriguez) is in. But Mamma makes Billy feel better with a funny story about when Daddy was a kid; the stars Billy gave Ollie belong to her.

Ollie also remembers a wish board, with a number of places on it, like the dark river, a white tower, a troll and Mark Twain. Zozo knows a couple of those things, and Ollie convinces the clown to help him escape. When they do, they run into a pink warrior teddy bear named Rosy (Mary J. Blige), who also has a history with Zozo.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Lost Ollie gives off strong Toy Story vibes, even though the animated toys interact with the real world in this series.

Our Take: Lost Ollie is based on the children’s book Ollie’s Odyssey, by William Joyce. But Shannon Tindle’s adaptation somehow feels darker and more adult than the book. Sets are dark and even outdoor shots are a bit murky. People swear. There seems to be no shortage of imminent danger for Ollie and even Billy, who gets bullied at school.

You want this to feel like a mystical, magical story about Ollie finding his way home, but in many ways it feels depressing and sad. And it also feels more than a little bit creepy at times, where we see scenes of Zozo lurking in shadows or almost getting torn apart by Buttons the dog. Momma may be sick, and Daddy is overworked. Zozo’s history looks quite dark, as well.

This feels like Netflix wanted to make sure that this adaptation didn’t get too saccharine, but in doing so, it just made things ever so slightly weird and off-putting. Groff gives Ollie a Southern accent that makes him sound like Huckleberry Hound (look him up on YouTube, kids!). Ollie is feisty and is up for a fight, given all he knows about martial arts, which makes Groff’s accent feel even more unnatural, which for some reason makes Ollie sound less real.

But, then again, he’s a cartoon character, so a silly voice is acceptable. What isn’t acceptable are the cartoonish accents on the human cast, especially Johnson and Rodriguez. The guess is that they live in Kentucky, given the University of Kentucky hat Daddy wears and the “dark river” being the Ohio. Is the accent Johnson and Rodriguez using a Kentuckian accent? Probably not; sounds more “generic Southern” to us, and it’s a huge distraction.

Maybe we’re just being grumpy, though. As the other three episodes of this limited series play out and Ollie goes on his journey back to Billy, we’ll see a lot more of Ollie’s memories filling in, and there might be a lot of feel-good moments. But the show sure gets off to a too-dark, too-unsettling start.

What Age Group Is This For?: We wish we knew. A wild guess would tell us that kids 9 and up would like the story and not be bothered by the dark elements or salty language from some of the characters.

Parting Shot: As the toys look at the Ohio river, we still hear Billy call out to Ollie in the woods.

Sleeper Star: The effects team at Industrial Light & Magic worked on the toy characters, and they did a good job of showing them interacting with real-world elements pretty much seamlessly, and giving Ollie and Zozo an expressiveness that’s hard to show with button eyes and plastic mouths.

Most Pilot-y Line: Flossie tells Buttons to “get your ass to bed.” Is that really necessary in this kind of show?

Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re recommending Lost Ollie on the off chance that the first episode’s weird, off-putting darkness was just in the first episode. But we’re still not 100% sure if this show is intended for kids or not.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.