Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, The End of Oak Street stars Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella, Christian Convery, and more.
Going into this film, I was pretty excited. I’ve talked about it many times before every time I cover a dinosaur-centric movie, but I grew up as a ‘90s dinosaur kid. For the longest time, I wanted to be a paleontologist. So, whenever I see a dinosaur movie on the horizon, I’m always excited to check it out. That excitement was only bolstered even more by having Anne Hathaway in the film, as well as Ewan McGregor, and having a director like David Robert Mitchell, who can be a divisive director, but has also directed some solid films like It Follows, which has a pretty big cult fan base.
Before the film started to showcase the dinosaur stuff in the latest marketing, there was a lot of mystery around the film and the fact that it is being produced by J.J. Abrams alongside others, but most notably coming out under J.J. Abrams’ production studio. There were a lot of questions about whether or not this was going to fall into the Cloverfield franchise, but then the marketing started to showcase that it was more of a dinosaur movie.
I’ll also say it was an interesting early experience for this one. Usually, when I’m invited out to come and see these movies early, it’s at a Regal or an AMC. Every here and there it’ll be at some smaller theater, but this one was at the Orlando Science Center here in Central Florida, which I thought was really cool. Being able to go and see the dino exhibit that we were invited to come see before the movie was a great experience. Then it was kind of like an interesting, very intimate theater room that they had there at the science center. I will say the seats were insanely uncomfortable, so by the end of the movie, my back hurt quite a bit.
Set in the 1980s, The End of Oak Street follows the Platt family, a suburban family whose ordinary lives are suddenly turned upside down when a mysterious cosmic event rips their neighborhood from its familiar surroundings and transports it somewhere completely unknown. As Denise, Greg, Audrey, and Brian try to understand what has happened, they discover that their quiet neighborhood has been dropped into a strange prehistoric world filled with enormous and dangerous dinosaurs. With their neighborhood transformed into an unfamiliar wilderness, the family must put aside their differences and stick together if they hope to survive and find a way home.
I’ll start this off by saying that I found The End of Oak Street to be a fun, entertaining watch. As a longtime fan of dinosaur movies, I think there’s a lot to enjoy in this movie. However, I’ve already seen some of the other early reactions from people who saw it last night, as of filming this, who have said things along the vein of it being the best dinosaur movie since Jurassic Park, the first one. And I just can’t agree.
There are elements about this film that held it back from being a great movie for me. However, I still had fun watching this film. I think there’s a lot of positives to talk about with this one.
The first thing is the cast. Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor are without a doubt the best part of this movie when it comes down to performances. This film tackles a familiar story where you have a family in a very scary situation. They’re in peril and have a lot of things to deal with here. Then you have two kids that are watching their parents not be at the happiest place in their lives and realizing that the marriage isn’t as strong as it could be. This situation with the dinosaurs is going to help fortify that as they have to work together as parents to protect their kids.
It’s a very traditional story. We’ve seen this kind of thing before. But I think Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor do a good job. There’s a lot of emotion when it comes down to their two characters, and both of them showcase why they’re such beloved and charismatic actors in these roles.
Outside of them as well, there’s some fun dinosaur action. I enjoyed a lot of the carnage in this movie. I will say when it comes down to the special effects, it’s a little bit of a hit-or-miss kind of thing. That leads into my negatives, so we’ll get into that more in just a moment. But I think when the moments look really good and the dinosaurs do look really good, there are some great moments here.
The best way I could describe it is that it is a circumstantially entertaining film. What I mean by that is the film is oftentimes the most exciting based on the circumstances our characters are in. Some of the antics and different things they’re dealing with are dramatic and scary for the characters, but there’s also a nice touch of levity in there as well that adds to some of these moments being fun and exciting, while also being able to break the tension of the scariness and be more funny. The cast definitely elevated these moments, and the big, crazy dinosaur moments made it a lot of fun to watch.
I’ll also say specifically, if you are afraid of snakes, there’s one scene in this movie with a prehistoric snake that is likely going to make you feel some kind of way. So, that’s your warning there if you are afraid of snakes.
As far as the dinosaur carnage, there’s plenty of people getting eaten by dinosaurs across this whole neighborhood. There are some pretty crazy moments that got reactions from the crowd. There are some great crowd-pleasing and fun moments as well.
I also enjoyed the musical score by Michael Giacchino. I think he gives us a classic old-school ’80s and ‘90s kind of musical score that, in a lot of ways, does feel like he’s pulling from a little bit of a John Williams Jurassic Park kind of feel for certain moments.
For the most part, you have a good-looking film when it comes down to cinematography, outside of some things we’ll talk about in just a moment. You have a good-sounding film in terms of sound design and the musical score. You have two great leads at the center of it that create the emotional core of the movie. And, just in terms of the dinosaur stuff, you have an exciting and fun movie when it comes down to those moments.
Of course, one of the things you have to mention in this film is Starbucks, the dog, who definitely causes a lot of trouble, but there are some absolute crowd-pleasing moments around this dog. There are a lot of the problems in this story that were centered around the dog. But I did enjoy the dog element of this film, even if he caused the majority of the issues.
With that said, I was torn with The End of Oak Street when it came down to its narrative. I think this is a film that oftentimes feels like they had a concept and they started to map out all of the big key moments with the dinosaurs in the movie, but then when it got down to actually telling its story, it does feel like it kind of takes a backseat.
I think that’s going to work for some people. I saw some early reactions for this, and some of them were very positive. It’s one of the best dinosaur films in the longest time. And while I do think it’s maybe a standout dinosaur film, I also think it’s just one of those things where the story could have been better.
I feel like I’m a little bit more on the minority on this one, even though we don’t know what the general response to this film is going to be across the board just yet. But there are elements about this film narratively that definitely just kind of make you ask, why is this in here? It begs the question of why is this in here?
There’s a couple of subplots that feel completely undercooked. And I think there’s a couple of moments in the film also that feel so abrupt, most notably the death of a specific character in the movie that I feel kind of just took the air out of the room when I watched it. It does shock the audience, but where it happens in the story and how it plays out does kind of feel like it undercuts the story.
Even though I think the movie has a very touching resolution that kind of brings all those moments together throughout it, you have a couple of story beats that just felt random to me.
At its core, this is a movie about a mother and a father who are on the edge of their relationship and realizing that they need to work together in order to save their marriage, but to save their kids more than anything. And so, that part of the film I enjoyed. That’s where the heart and the soul of the movie is.
But then you also have a subplot where the son is going to get beat up by this bully because he broke the arm of the bully’s brother. And that’s just kind of a tack-on thing in the movie that doesn’t really go anywhere.
The characters also meet a young girl named Janette halfway through the movie who joins their posse, but she really doesn’t add anything to the movie at all. There’s also a thrown-in romantic element between one of the kids in the movie with another character that just feels tacked on. It doesn’t really go anywhere.
There were several moments like that over the course of the movie where I just felt they could have taken the story somewhere a lot further or simplified some of the things they’re trying to focus on that ultimately didn’t build to anything.
On top of that as well, I did mention that there were some inconsistencies with the visual effects. There are moments where some of the dinosaurs look really good, especially when they’re front and center in the shots. But there are a couple of moments that I genuinely thought looked like they were unfinished or undercooked compared to other shots.
There are moments where the dinosaurs are front and center right there with our characters and they look pretty solid. They do look like CGI, but they look pretty solid. But then there’s also a couple of moments, like wide shots, where you see multiple dinosaurs or you just see a huge landscape where it doesn’t always look great.
And there are moments where our characters are so clearly on some sort of green or blue screen that it just kind of created this disconnect from reality. Even though you have a movie that has pretty solid set design and locations, and since it’s set in the ’80s, you got the cars and the wardrobe and everything that creates that immersive feeling, there were areas about the VFX that I think sometimes were a little distracting to the eye.
It’s not something that’s going to ruin the movie for me, but there was specifically one moment in the film where there’s a person who gets their limb ripped off by a dinosaur, and it just looked unfinished. Just them sitting there with their limb ripped off didn’t look all that great. And I even heard the guy that was sitting right next to me go, “Oh, the budget must have been stretched thin.” And I kind of agreed with him because there were just moments like that in the film where I thought, “Oh, this looks great.” And then the next shot would be like, “That looks okay.”
So, there was a little bit of inconsistency when it came down to the visuals for me. Again, not something that’s going to ruin the experience, I think, for most people, but if you’re somebody who catches on to those kinds of things, I can see it being a bit annoying for some people.
And then when it comes down to the resolution of the film, I think it’s a touching, nice resolution that is going to leave most people on a high. It’s definitely a cutesy moment. And again, I think the film touches on some great beats of levity throughout that.
But I also think that the resolution of the film makes you scratch your head a little bit more. You have these people being transported to the time of the dinosaurs. So, there is a time element here. I don’t want to get too deep into it, but there is a time travel element to this movie.
And if you start to dig deep into how time travel works and how it would affect certain things with the resolution of this film, it gets a little messy. You can start to poke holes in how anything about the end of this movie would actually make sense given what we’ve seen up to this point and what is shown at the end.
There are also times where you have this weird balance of humor and drama, but sometimes I feel like they clash. Sometimes the humor feels like it’s stacked too heavily on the drama where some of the dramatic moments don’t feel as heavy as they should in a way that it just kind of created a bit of a tonal imbalance for me.
It didn’t ruin the film. I do think there are moments in this film that are dramatic and genuinely funny and crowd-pleasing, but it created this tonal inconsistency for me that had me feeling a little bit mixed.
By the time I got to The End of Oak Street, I was entertained by the dinosaur action. I was entertained by the visuals, but I wasn’t in love with the overall story. I thought a lot of the characters were kind of one-note and undercooked.
The main storyline that has most of the meat on the bone was between these two parents that are on the verge of a divorce. And that does come full circle. But there are times in the film that undercut that story ever so slightly.
With some of the side plots and random side characters that don’t really add much to the movie, it ultimately felt like a movie that was a cooler concept with entertaining moments than a great story overall on its own.
Still, I enjoyed The End of Oak Street. I think it’s definitely worth checking out if you’re a fan of dinosaur movies and if you like Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor and the rest of the cast of this film. It’s by no means a movie I would say stay away from. It’s just not a film that I’d say is amazing.
It’s entertaining and fun, but I don’t necessarily know that this is going to be one that a lot of people will be thinking about super heavily by the time we get to the end of the year.
However, based on some of the reactions I saw from people online, this could be just my personal take on the film. I could be in the minority on this one, which does happen from time to time.
Rating: 6.5/10