If “Lost Ollie” were a movie released in theaters a decade or so ago, rather than a four-part series on Netflix, it’s entirely possible it would have become part of our pop cultural fabric, like “WALL-E” or “Up.”
Usually, you need a full-press marketing push for that to happen. But when it comes to streaming, that’s rarely in the cards.
In terms of the premise, “Toy Story” is the more obvious comparison, wherein a child’s playthings are anthropomorphized in ways both whimsical and sometimes (to me) grating. Created by Shannon Tindle and directed by Peter Ramsey (adapting William Joyce’s 2016 book “Ollie’s Odyssey”) the series is gorgeously made, a hybrid of live-action (the humans and the environment) and computer-generated visual effects (the toys) that give Ollie and others their ability to move and talk and express subtle emotions in ways that are wonderfully vivid and tactile.
