It's kind of funny that The End of Oak Street delivered on the broken promise of the latter Jurassic World movies. While those movies teased but ultimately only gave us glimpses of dinosaurs in the suburbs, this film gives it to us in spades. For a PG-13 movie, it has a surprising amount of violence (though it does refrain from being gory) and does not hesitate when killing off the various denizens of the neighborhood. It gives us everything we wanted from Jurassic World that we were denied, and I respect it for that.
To give a summary, in July of 1982, the Platt family finds not only themselves, but their entire neighborhood transported to the distant past. Dinosaurs quickly invade the neighborhood and the family finds itself struggling to survive. As is often the case with films produced by JJ Abrams, there is also a healthy amount of family drama akin in the vein of the great Spielberg movies of the 80s.
For obvious reasons, this story feels familiar in many ways - hell, the movie almost forces a Spielberg-esque bicycle scene with son Brian (Christian Convery) - and director David Robert Mitchell leans into it mostly successfully. The film isn't completely devoid of subversions, but a seasoned moviegoer is going to predict most of the major beats should they wish to.
Mitchell mostly avoids this by keeping things moving at such a pace that you don't have time to think, but there is something to be said for using familiar tropes to focus on the character work being done. Anne Hathaway, as the family matriarch Denise, is particularly good in her role in a way that the movie didn't need but is much better for having. Ewan McGregor, who plays Greg, the father, doesn't have quite as much to work with but nevertheless also gives his character details that enrich the movie in small ways.
The dinosaurs are probably on the more accurate end of movie creations, though not without creative liberties. Some of these work well - the body proportions are off in a way that adds to the surrealism of the situation - but some of them feel odd. Having the long-necked dinosaurs (I dare not try to guess which they are supposed to be given the mix of dinosaurs shown) covered in what looks like hair just feels weird as opposed to surreal.
There are two main criticisms I would have for the film, both on the 'personal pet peeve' end of the spectrum. The first? There is an obvious hole in the story where a sapphic storyline involving the daughter Audrey, played by Maisy Stella, was meant to be. In a time period with the type of president we have, running away from any LGBT storyline feels like a deliberate choice, and not one that makes me comfortable.
The other main critique involves a mild spoiler - so mild that I hesitate to even call it a spoiler. Anyone who has watched a movie can see a certain plot point coming, but consider this the spoiler-warning paragraph before I delve into it.
So, there is a family dog that disappears early in the film and of course it shows up in a pivotal moment to save the day. I'm not against this. This is a certain type of movie, and in this type of movie, the dog is going to live. That is fine. What is not fine is this movie going out of its way to kill multiple cats. One, I would not be happy about, but I could live with - especially since it is one of the first hints that something is wrong. But multiple? Including a scene where it is several dinosaurs picking at the corpse of one? It just feels so unnecessary that it rubbed me the wrong way very late in the movie.
Would I recommend this? Probably. It's a fun time, and it gives us something we haven't seen in awhile onscreen. But I'd more like recommend Primitive War before this one.
6 out of 10.
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