Review by Tim Robins
When a cosmic anomaly shatters suburbia, one family is thrust into a high-stakes, reality-bending adventure where time collapses, chaos moves in next door, and survival depends on sticking together
WARNING: SPOILERS
In The End of Oak Street, a suburban family wakes up to find somehow Dinosaurs have returned and brought The Eighties with them. Director David Robert Mitchell, of It Follows (2014) fame, seques into the mid-concept, mystery box world of co-producer J.J. Abrams, and attempts to hit Jurassic World out of the rough. But, instead of a hole in one, the film only just about lands on the fairway.
The film is an enjoyable enough run-a-round that follows a family somehow survive a suburb that, thanks to space stuff, has planted prehistoric flora and fauna on the doorstep. Set in 1982, the family have to cope with underwhelming fashion, big hair and a clutch of cliches evoking such Eighties offerings as E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and The ‘Burbs and other offerings from Stephen Spielberg and Joe Dante, respectively. The fun is in wondering who will survive, who will be eaten and who will be regurgitated along the way?
Anne Hathaway gives it some well as supermother (not literally) Denise Platt, a Mary so-so Sue me of sorts. One minute Mrs Platt is secretly penning a rather too true to life family drama on her wistfully nostalgic electric typewriter, the next she is recklessly running about the place and using the family rifle (this is America) to shoot dinosaurs in her garden.
Ewan McGregor plays Greg Platt, a blandest of bland family guy secretly working as a pizza delivery guy to keep house and home together after being made redundant – a nice Eighties touch. But McGregor turns out to be less hero and more dino-bait. I’d say the Trainspotting star is criminally wasted here, but his Obi-whanest-of-the-Wan Kenobi still haunts the streams as a ghost of his former self. What’s left of his force ghost persona is buried beneath a thin ‘American’ accent.
Then there are the Platt children, Audrey and Brian, both ripped from the Eighties’ movie playbook. They certainly look the part, but the script doesn’t lift them from the mundane. Brian (Christian Convery) has a fully functioning bow and arrow (should have brought a cross bow) and wrestles with weighty theological issues such as is believing in God better or worse for picking up girls? Audrey is played by Maisy Stella, a science nerd who finds time to sit alone in the family car and emote a lot (cry).
Oh how I wish Joe Dante, famed for Piranha (1978), Gremlins (1984) Matinee (1993) and Small Soldiers (1998), could have directed this movie. Or Spielberg, if he was still in career nostalgia mode from earlier this year’s Disclosure Day (meh). Both those directors can capture wonkily functional families without raising a sweat.
Why wasn’t one of the kids so into dinosaurs that they tore a page from a book of prehistory to deliberately play bronto-bingo? And why didn’t someone comment that the dinos look weird? The production has boldly given the creatures a very twenty-first century makeover, but no one in 1982 would expect all the hair, fur and feathers.
There are other kinds of characters who gesture towards an Eighties’ movie: an angry neighbour who hates the Platt’s dog and a kick-arse, gun toting librarian. Neither make memorable “guest stars”. Where was my namesake, who could have been hiding out in a basement while planning to wage war on the dinosaurs? And where was a fantastically funny and scary stereotype like Esmeralda, the born again Christian neighbour in Edward Scissorhands (1990)?
I notice a lot of critics have spotted that the film pulls its punches, particularly when it comes to its portrayal of dino-violence. There are scenes where the camera pans or cuts away from victims. And there are scenes where the direction sets up dinosaur attacks that never happen.
Was a bully punching down on Brian Platt really supposed to be pulled off Platt by the bully’s young, handicapped, brother, or was Brian going to close his eyes only to open them and find bully and brother have been carried off in the beaks of Dinos? And when the family troop passed stacks of dino poo, I honestly expected to see the remains of a character sticking out of the dung, even if it was only an identifiable necklace or pair of glasses.
There are good set ups, particularly a scene in which Greg runs away from a dino chasing him unseen from the other side of a fence, and another where the Platt family try to prevent a dino bird breaking in through the front door of the house. But the tension isn’t sustained long enough and the payoffs are too pat. A few scenes where gigantic creatures sneak up on people unnoticed have an amusing, “Look out behind you!” pantomime quality.
The film doesn’t evoke The Eighties well, nor Eighties’ film making. Surely the long missing dog should have emerged, running triumphantly from out of one of the film’s “time-bubbles” and just in time to save the day? Instead the dog just seems to be a living logo named ‘Starbuck’! (Starbucks did exist in 1982, but I think the name is more likely a reference to the character in the novel Moby Dick or in the TV show Battlestar Galactica).
The sound track by BAFTA and three-time Emmy award-winning composer Michel Giacchino, aims for John Williams’s morning star, but too often doesn’t get much further than the garden fence. It’s rousing,and percussive enough when it needs to be. Giacchino has worked with Abrams on other, tepid productions (Lost, for example).
I left the cinema feeling gloomier than I should have for what is a bit of a crowd pleasing, Summer ‘even’ movie when all is said and done. And I will say that the film’s feel-good conclusion pulled a number of surprises I wasn’t expecting.
The End of Oak Street deserves an R-rated directors’ cut, although I am not sure there ever was material for one. In the end, the film reinforces the evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds by being not two billion years away from a turkey.
Tim Robins
The End of Oak Street is in cinemas now | Official UK Website
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From Nathan Rabin, former staff writer for The A.V. Club and The Dissolve and the author of Weird Al: The Book, You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me, and The Weird Accordion to Al, comes The Fractured Mirror, an exhaustively researched exploration of American movies about filmmaking. This loving deep dive chronicles, with humour, wit, and affection, a solid century of cinema about cinema, with illustrations from Felipe Sobreiro (The Return of the Blues Brothers) and a foreword from legendary filmmaker Joe Dante (Gremlins, Matinee). As an homage to The Golden Turkey Awards, which included a fake movie along with a plethora of real-life stinkers, Rabin got bad movie luminaries like How Did This Get Made‘s Paul Scheer, Dan McCoy of The Flop House, Andrew Jupin of We Hate Movies and Author/Humorist Mike Sacks to create blurbs for movies that exist only in their imaginations.
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A freelance journalist and Doctor Who fanzine editor since 1978, Tim Robins has written on comics, films, books and TV programmes for a wide range of publications including Starburst, Interzone, Primetime and TV Guide.
His brief flirtation with comics includes ghost inking a 2000AD strip and co-writing a Doctor Who strip with Mike Collins. Since 1990 he worked at the University of Glamorgan where he was a Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Media Studies and the social sciences. Academically, he has published on the animation industry in Wales and approaches to social memory. He claims to be a card carrying member of the Politically Correct, a secret cadre bent on ruling the entire world and all human thought.
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