Oak Street is like any other 1982 suburban neighborhood. The kids bike around, pre-teens are suddenly discovering the opposite sex and parents are trying to keep their marriages together while unsuccessfully hiding their difficulties from their kids. It’s just that on Oak Street, and the surrounding couple of blocks, they also have to deal with having the neighborhood suddenly transported back in time several million years to the age of the dinosaurs. Needless to say, this is something no one was really prepared for and understandably, things get crazy, fast. Such is the setup for The End Of Oak Street from Under The Silver Lake director David Robert Mitchell.
In particular, Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg Pratt (Ewan McGregor) are the couple with marital problems in question, their children Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery) trying not to notice. And it is their relationships that slowly repair themselves as the four pull together to try and survive the sudden Mesozoic madness they find themselves in and figure out if there is a way back to their own time.
The End Of Oak Street is a perfectly serviceable, well crafted b-movie. There are lots of thrills and fun as people run about trying their best to avoid becoming dino-chow. The cast of characters and neighbors are introduced fairly well early on. But a number of friend group characters of Audrey and Brian disappear from the narrative soon after. While a number of adult characters wind up on the wrong end of a dinosaur’s digestive tract, we don’t see anything happening to the other kid characters, suggesting that the film wants to play it safe enough to not really show any juveniles getting gobbled.
Much like producer J. J. Abrams’ 2011 film Super 8, The End Of Oak Street really wears its Steven Spielberg influence fully on its sleeve. The film’s early 1980s setting – with some impeccable set decoration and costume design – definitely invokes a feeling of nostalgia for those of us of a certain age. The suburban neighborhood setting, especially as established in the film’s opening neighborhood block party, seems to be so idealized as to probably not have actually existed like this. And the film even touches on a very familiar Spielberg trope of a family where the parents are on the verge of splitting up. But beyond that though, Oak Street does not do much to explore its influence. It could have tried to find something to say about these types of popcorn blockbusters or maybe inverted some of its familiar plot points. Instead, it just embraces them unquestioningly.
More frustrating though, is the film’s ending. Without giving too much away, there are some actions taken that basically undermine some previous impactful moments. This storytelling rug jerk just feels cheap, as if the movie is yelling “Fooled you!” at the audience. It is nothing more than a sour note to end on.
