“The End of Oak Street” was clearly made by someone who grew up watching the same cinema collection I did.
The new movie from writer and director David Robert Mitchell is a fun mashup of all of my childhood favorites — one part “Jumanji,” one part “Signs,” one part “Back To The Future,” and a lot of parts “Jurassic Park” — but in a way that feels like an homage, not a rip-off.
These were films I watched over and over as a kid, because 1. I had cool parents who showed me the best movies, and 2. I found them thrilling but not terrifying. While these movies were at times incredibly intense, there was in each of them an underlying hope that, even when things seemed really, really bad, in the end the human spirit would persevere and the protagonists would survive their home being transformed into a jungle, an alien attack, a harrowing time travel journey, or a dinosaur theme park during a power outage.
I felt that same warm and familiar sense of thrill combined with hope while watching “The End of Oak Street,” which hearkens to those treasured films, both in its early ’80s aesthetic and in its very fun and exciting content.
The film stars Ewan McGregor — who is doing an atrocious American accent — and Anne Hathaway as a suburban husband and wife in 1982 named Greg and Denise Platt, parents to Audrey and Brian Platt. The Platts are in a failing marriage, a fact that they’re hiding from their children and neighbors. But just before things come to a head in their personal lives, their home and surrounding neighborhood are transported back in time through a cosmic wormhole. Back to the prehistoric era when dinosaurs roamed the earth — and ate anything that moved.
In the 1982 neighborhood, anything that moves happens to be people and pets. And the dinosaurs are hungry. So most of the viewing experience is spent watching the Platt family trying to survive both inside their home and outside it, while many of their neighbors are gobbled by giant reptiles lurking around every corner. Which sounds terrifying.
But it isn’t, really. It’s thrilling and it’s hopeful. And sometimes funny.
I mean, there are a couple of bloody images that I would hesitate to let my children see, one violent kill that made me gasp in surprise, and a couple of intense near-attacks, but most of the dinosaur-eating-people scenes are sillier than serious. The movie is able to pull this off, I believe, because the stakes never actually feel very high. It shares so much DNA with the films from my childhood that I never had any doubt that our characters would survive, because other characters I loved have survived a board-game-turned-jungle-survival, an alien attack, a trip back in time, and a dinosaur theme park during a power outage.
So with the stakes feeling as low as they did, I was able to have a downright hoot watching the Platt family navigate their prehistoric neighborhood, and enjoy Mitchell’s creative choices. Choices like giving the dinosaurs feathers, which, according to my very limited paleontologic knowledge, is historically accurate. And like giving Anne Hathaway bangs, which I do not know the historical accuracy of, but appreciated all the same.
The movie is not perfect. Anne Hathaway, who yes, is in every movie this summer, is excellent, per usual, but her onscreen family lacked luster. As previously mentioned, Ewan McGregor’s American accent is pretty bad, And I’m starting to wonder if he’s just not really a great actor, based on this performance. The characters make some idiotic choices, like leaving their secure, boarded-up home to search for the family dog, and forgetting to look behind them when THEIR NEIGHBORHOOD IS LITERALLY INFESTED WITH TYRANNOSAURUS REXES. And the time travel is only barely, sort of explained through some sloppy exposition that vaguely references Carl Sagan and his theory on wormholes.
But honestly, who cares? It’s a 90-minute movie about dinosaurs. No one needs to give an Oscar-worthy performance or an in-depth lecture on theories of the universe in a movie about dinosaurs. Anyone buying a ticket to “The End of Oak Street” just wants to have fun, and “The End of Oak Street” provides a whole lot of it. Right up until the final few minutes, when the movie elevates itself from silly fun to a time jump that poses some fascinating philosophical questions about individuality, family and survival.
I left the movie entertained, thrilled and hopeful, which is exactly what I would want from a film that pays its respects to some of the greatest movies that came before.