"Olive, the other reindeer" is charming, likeable Christmas entertainment for all the family. The movie tells a tale about a sweet-natured dog who mistakenly assumes that Santa wants her to help pull his sleigh. Santa had expressed no such wish but this does not keep the dog from trying, even though she's somewhat disadvantaged in the flying department.
I can't say that I was blown away by the animation style, which belonged squarely in the late 1990's and, presumably, wasn't thought particularly attractive even then. On the plus side, "Olive" is strewn with glorious jokes and puns, a number of which may take a few moments to register. Olive-the-nontypical-dog makes for an enormously sweet and friendly protagonist - some excellent voice work here - and her battle with her postman nemesis is genuinely funny.
Still, I wonder about the general message carried by "Olive". Is it "If you pursue your dreams with hope and energy, you may achieve greater things than you thought you were capable of" ? If so, I don't disagree. However, I fear the message may be closer to "If you pursue your dreams with hope and energy, you WILL achieve all your goals, however far-fetched and ambitious". Now this is the kind of "everybody can do, get or be anything they want" cr*p that self-help gurus and positive-thinking merchants have been peddling for decades, with disastrous results for Western societies. The fact that this cr*p is so wide-spread and pervasive doesn't make it any less cr*p.
So "Olive" may be a good starting point for a constructive parent-child discussion about the difference between reachable and unreachable goals.
I can't say that I was blown away by the animation style, which belonged squarely in the late 1990's and, presumably, wasn't thought particularly attractive even then. On the plus side, "Olive" is strewn with glorious jokes and puns, a number of which may take a few moments to register. Olive-the-nontypical-dog makes for an enormously sweet and friendly protagonist - some excellent voice work here - and her battle with her postman nemesis is genuinely funny.
Still, I wonder about the general message carried by "Olive". Is it "If you pursue your dreams with hope and energy, you may achieve greater things than you thought you were capable of" ? If so, I don't disagree. However, I fear the message may be closer to "If you pursue your dreams with hope and energy, you WILL achieve all your goals, however far-fetched and ambitious". Now this is the kind of "everybody can do, get or be anything they want" cr*p that self-help gurus and positive-thinking merchants have been peddling for decades, with disastrous results for Western societies. The fact that this cr*p is so wide-spread and pervasive doesn't make it any less cr*p.
So "Olive" may be a good starting point for a constructive parent-child discussion about the difference between reachable and unreachable goals.