Can you hear that?
The sound you hear so thunderously and warmheartedly is the massive heart beating at the core of Lost Ollie, a limited four-part series based on the 2016 novel Ollie’s Odyssey by William Joyce, which rips your soul from your body over and over before putting it back again, so fulsomely and beautifully that you don’t begrudge the enormous emotional journey it takes you on.
Who, or what you might ask, takes you on this trip from the very best of times to the very worst and then back out the other side where the good times may once again roll?
It’s a very cute homemade toy rabbit by the name of Ollie who, stitched together with love from a old shirt and a worn dress (courtesy of Billy’s mum, played by Gina Rodriguez, who makes the toy and dad Jake Johnson), is the best friend of Billy (William Carson as young Billy and Kesler Talbot as older Billy), a boy who, over the course of this whimsically intense series has a lot on his plate, the extent of which is hinted at in the trailer if you’re paying attention.
But to be fair, sweet, loyal and tenacious Ollie, who is very much a “who” and not really a “what”, also has a great deal with which to contend as a series of events sees him go from playing pirates and all manner of other games with his beloved Billy to trying to find a way back home, with the help of old toy clown Zozo (Tim Blake Nelson) and motley ninja pink teddy bear Rosie (Mary J. Bilge) using a series of half-remembered cryptic clues which point to things like “a dark river”, “a white tower” and “Mark Twain” as his markers back to the warm and love of Billy’s bedroom.
There’s very much a Toy Story flavour to proceedings – Joyce began his film career on the iconic Pixar film so no surprise there – with toys being able to talk to toys, even with adults watching (they’re too oblivious to notice what’s happening before them), and with children who can speak to toys in a way that adults simply cannot.
It initially looks idealistically whimsical and heartwarming, bolstering the idea conveyed in the trailer that Lost Ollie is one of those bigger-than-normal adventures where some bad things happen, all survivable, on the way to a heartwarming ending that sets everything back to right again.
It does that to an extent, true, but what it also does, and the trailer doesn’t really touch on this aspect at all, go to some very dark and searing places, the kind that makes Toy Story and much of Pixar’s emotionally honest storytelling, looks like warm in the soul-tearing park.
In short, and avoiding some pretty tremendous spoilers, Lost Ollie is not quite as full of whimsy as it might appear, though it is very much there and one of the parts of the story that propel it mightily and movingly forward.
The darkness and searing emotional trauma at the heart of Lost Ollie works beautifully, amplifying how great and unyielding the bond is between a boy (or girl) and their toy and how, even under the pressure of growing up and the terrible events that can mark the process, and how it can drive the most brave and affecting of undertakings.
Which in Ollie’s case is to journey from an op/thrift shop where he is consigned in a box with a ragtag bunch of objects across town and countryside back to Billy’s side who, after some uncharacteristic behaviour courtesy of grief and bullying, realises that he needs Ollie by his side just as he promised he always would be.
Using some very clever narrative devices, which give the impression of one thing happening while in fact another is taking place entirely, Lost Ollie is one of those series that combines whimsy and some of the most groundedly intense emotions you will ever feel into a seamless story that manages to be both lightheartedly joyful and darkly sad in a way that marks the truly terrible moments of our lives.
If you have ever lost someone, Lost Ollie will speak to you. If you have ever moved mountains to get back to someone’s side, Lost Ollie will inspire you and if you’ve ever wondered if there is a way back from the darkest of places to those bathed in light and happiness, then you will find in Lost Ollie a story that affirms that can happen but not without the greatest of all journeys to get there.
Mixing live action and CGI that comes together so wonderfully you will believe toys walk among us, Lost Ollie possesses a visual life of its own, which when married with judicious use of some country music classics – the series is set in the American South and is a love letter to the vibrancy of its music and landscape – creates a spectacle big and expansive enough to go with its huge, excoriatingly sad and upliftingly happy beating heart.
It can’t help but draw everything from you and wring you out, like the very stories immersively and invasively should, but it does so in such a finely judged and heartfelt way, using characters that spring from the screen with power, heart and life-worn vivacity, that you will find yourself less watching Lost Ollie and more living it, with the series leaving such a mark on your heart that you will not soon forget it, because fittingly, it is all about how the greatest connections of our lives never go unremarked and are always the things that, adventures or not, drive us forward until we, hopefully, ourselves back home where we belong.