Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

(1999)

If you like the Simpsons you may as well like Olive the Other Reindeer. It was produced by Matt Greoning’s Curiosity Company and even features Dan Castallaneta (Homer Simpson) as the voice of the disgruntled postman. Futurama fans might also catch the voice of John DiMaggio (Bender Bending Rodriguez) in the small part of a bus driver.

I had believed for a long time the postman was voiced by Maurice LaMarce (Brain of Pinky and the Brain). The postman’s “BAH! Bug and HUM!” song is so reminiscent of the Robot Devil’s “Robot Hell” song, who else could it be? But nope. It’s Homer Simpson seemingly doing a great impression of Maurice. Strange. Listen to both songs and tell me these are done by two different people.

My first encounter with Olive the Other Reindeer was at Carl’s Jr. (aka Hardee’s). Kids could get Olive the Other Reindeer toys with their kids meal and you could also get a copy of the film on vhs. I can’t remember if I actually got a copy. I think I picked it up second-hand much later in life.

The genuinely funny story makes up a bit for the bizarre artistic choices. I’m trying not to be critical here because I actually really enjoyed this. It seems the whole thing is done through some very economical and speedy version of Flash animation. If you are unfamiliar, Flash is like using a computer to make a puppet show using digital paper dolls. That’s probably an over simplification.

The characters themselves seem like they were designed purposefully to resemble a child’s drawing. It doesn’t come off as poor art skill per sé, but sometimes it was hard to figure out exactly what I was looking at. It’s downright Picasso-esque at times.

Drew Barrymore provides the voice of Olive, a dog who has a hard time acting like a dog. Olive’s master Tim (voiced by Jay Mohr) is super pissed that his dog doesn’t act like a dog. One day Olive hears that Santa (voiced by Ed Asher because no one else is ever allowed to play Santa, EVER!)… she hears Santa is cancelling Christmas for some reason, blah blah blah all of the other reindeer… wait, did he just say “Olive, the other reindeer…”?

Enter Fido, Olive’s pet flea (voiced by the hilarious Peter MacNicol), a chaotic force in her world, serving as both exacerbater of the rift between Olive and Tim and the impetus spurring Olive to help Santa. I would count Fido as a villain save for the fact he has no tragic backstory nor motivation to be malicious. He’s basically just a bad friend!

Of course the real villain is the postman who hates Christmas because he has to lift so much weight when delivering gifts. It makes perfect sense.

His comeuppance is probably the best I’ve seen for any villain in the history of villains. I won’t spoil it.

Believe it or not this slapped-together but brilliant gem has music performed by both Big Bad VooDoo Daddy and R.E.M.. Michael Stripe, lead singer and lyricist of R.E.M. even provides the voice of Schnitzel, Reindeer Blitzen’s flightless cousin. He sounds just like you’d expect a band member unaccustomed to voice acting might sound. He gets an A for effort though.

This is great for kids but has a lot of quick smart jokes for adults too as you’d expect from a cast like this. Olive has become a Christmas tradition in our house right along with Krampus and An 8-Bit Christmas. The whole thing is on YouTube and it’s only 45 minutes so go nuts!

In fact, here’s the link to the whole thing: