Advanced publicity for The End of Oak Street blames a mysterious cosmic event for transporting a typical American suburban neighborhood to a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
Anne Hathaway, who seems to be everywhere this summer, and Ewan McGregor, who lately has been working in TV series, star as husband and wife in a high-concept job that keeps them on the run.
Director David Robert Mitchell can’t muster the suburban charm that Spielberg has mastered, but his movie begs for comparison with Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, which did a better job of providing a reason for why humans must struggle to keep from becoming dinosaur food, a fate not all Oak Street residents can escape.
The movie's involuntary time travel involves a large bubble that intermittently appears and serves as a portal through time. As an explanation, it proves laughably feeble. Maybe that was the point.
Mitchell leans heavily on two young performers — Maisy Stella and Christian Convery. They play the Platt children, who dodge dinosaurs without their parents when Convery's Brian sets out to find his beloved dog Starbuck. His sister follows, and another youngster (Jordan Alexa Davis) eventually joins them.
The End of Oak Street seems to be turning pages in a give-em-what-they-came-for playbook, offering a series of dinosaur attacks and relying heavily on CGI to keep the film monster heavy and to ensure that these destructive behemoths prove reasonably disgusting.
A giant snake invading a house makes for one of the best-assembled set pieces and there is (wait for it) a scene of dinosaur copulation), a stab at genre-mocking amusement in the midst of survival terror.
Watching McGregor's character try to defend himself with a sledgehammer looks a bit silly. Hathaway wields a rifle. But the movie emphasizes flight more than fight.
Modest attempts are made to deepen the characters. Aspiring to be more than a homemaker, Hathaway’s Denise is writing a novel; McGregor’s Greg tipples from a hidden bottle; he has been reduced to delivering pizzas to earn extra cash. Husband and wife often argue.
Best taken as a love letter to ‘80s cinema, End of Oak Street might have done well to lean more heavily into its goofier aspects and tried for full-out comedy.
As it stands, a formulaic End of Oak Street offers many views of Hathaway running, Hathaway screaming, and Hathaway expressing fear.
It’s not easy to spoof shlock movies without becoming one, a trap that End of Oak Street can’t entirely avoid, but credit Mitchell with moving rapidly until he reaches the film's unfortunately muddled copout of an ending.
